
Class. 
Book. 



Gopyiightl^°_ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



FRANCE 
HERSELF AGAIN 



BY 
ERNEST DIMNET 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

NEW YORK AND LONDON 
Ubc Tknicfeerbocfter press 

1914 



He 331 



Copyright, 1914 

BY 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 



NOV 19 1914 

Ube ftnfciierboclier press, Dew ISori: 

©Gi,A388458 



s2 



PREFACE 

This volume has been written in English for the Eng- 
lish-speaking public, and with constant attention to 
the English point of view. So many books nowadays 
consist of articles reprinted under a title destined to 
give them some sort of unity, that I may be forgiven 
for pointing out that this is not the case with the 
present work. ^ Whatever its faults may be, it has been 
conceived as a whole and aims at offering to the reader 
a body of doctrine which will help him to understand 
the rapid evolution of France in the past ten years, 
and to discriminate between what is real progress, and 
what ought to be regarded as an accidental relapse. 
This could not be done without an analysis seeking the 
causes of both the progress and the shortcomings in an 
historic development of considerable duration. There 
may be an appearance of austerity in such a method, 
but it is the only one that is repaid by clear under- 
standing, and I feel confident that the section of the 
public for which I have written will not blame me for 
adopting it. 

As may well be suspected, the greater part of this 

' Four chapters were printed, it is true, in the Nineteenth Century 
and After, one in the Fortnightly Review, and one in the British Review; 
but they were intended as part of the volume I was writing. I am 
glad of this opportunity to thank the London editors who in the past 
ten years have frequently welcomed my contributions, more particularly 
my highly valued friend Mr. William Wray Skilbeck. 

iii 



iv Preface 

book was written before the war began, and I was 
uncertain at first whether I ought not to defer its 
publication till the peace was signed. But I found on 
reading the proofs that I did not feel inclined to make 
a single alteration of any importance. In fact, the 
reader will soon find out for himself that the volume 
could not have been written without the danger of war 
which awakened France in 1905, that the possibility 
of a war is present in every page, and in fact that this 
possibility and the effects it has had on French public 
opinion is what gives the book its innermost unity. 
The last pages, which were written while my ears were 
still full of the booming of cannon, are not by any 
means an epilogue, but a conclusion in the truest sense 
of the word. 

A war regarded philosophically is only important in 
its beginning and in its end, in the way in which it is 
accepted by a country and in its consequences. The 
interval is the noblest repetition — and Heaven knows 
how we live in spirit with those who day after day pro- 
long that heroic monotony — but it is only a repetition. 
One of the questions which this volume attempts to 
answer, viz.. What are the effects of a revived warlike 
spirit likely to be on the French nation? has been 
answered by the facts in the first weeks of the war ; but 
the other great problem. What is the relation between 
the new France and her Government? or in other 
terms, Will the leaders of France be as worthy of her 
after the war as the magnetism of the army has made 
them during the hostilities? will remain, when the 
peace is signed, exactly what it is said to be in the third 
part of this work. It will, no doubt, be nearer a favour- 
able solution than it was when the Radicals wanted a re- 
duction of the military service, but it will be what it was. 



Preface v 

The present volume therefore is offered to the public 

as an explanation of the warHke France with which it is 
in such deep sympathy, but above all as an explanation 
of modem France as it has been since the beginning of 
the twentieth century, and as it is likely to appear in 
the coming decades. I have written it under difficulties, 
but with the pleasure attending the expression of what 
patient thought convinces us to be the truth, and with 
such encouragement from my publishers, especially 
Mr. Percy Spalding (of London) as I can never forget. 



CONTENTS 
PREFACE 



PAGE 



This book written in English from the English point of view, 
not a collection of reprinted articles artificially put to- 
gether, but an attempt at a complete analysis of the forces 
which have made contemporary France what it is — Rela- 
tion of this analysis to the war of 19 14. . . . iii 

INTRODUCTORY 

Difficulty but possibility of an ex professo inquiry into the psy- 
chology of a nation and its historic elements — Main posi- 
tion: France, since 1905, has become once more a nation 
and is no longer a ground for experiments. ... I 

PART I. THE DETERIORATION OF FRANCE 
Section I. Under the Second Empire 



CHAP. 

1. This Deterioration was unexpected .... 

2. Danger of the Personal Ideas of Napoleon the Third 

3. Even greater Danger arising from the Philosophy and Lit 

erature of the Second Empire . . . . • 

4. Materialism .... ... 

5. Indifference to the Moral Consequences of Theories 

6. Humanitarianism. Victor Hugo. The Revolution of 1848 

7. Intellectual Hegemony of Germany gladly accepted 

8. Unwholesomeness of Literature. Cynicism underlying the 

Formula and Spirit of Realism .... 

9. Anti-Christianity. Renan and La Vie de Jesus . 

10. Decadence of Morals ...... 

11. End of the Second Empire. Universal Optimism and Delu- 

sions ......•••• 

vii 



7 
9 

II 

14 
16 

19 

22 

25 
30 
35 

38 



viii Contents 



PAGE 

12. The Future of France as prophesied by Pr^vost-Paradol as 

early as 1 868 ........ 43 

13. The Denouement: the War of 1870, the Commune, the 

Frankfort Treaty ....... 49 



Section II. Deterioration of France under the 
Second Republic 

The spirit of disorder no longer embodied in philo- 
sophies and poems, but represented by the ruling authorities 52 

CH.\P. 

1. Relation of this Deterioration to the Republican Institutions. 

Its two periods: 1876-1898 and 1898-1905 ... 52 

1876-1898 

2. Imperfections and Dangers of the so-called Constitution of 

1875. Hegemony of the Chamber and Effacement of the 
Government . . . . . . . .56 

3. The Chamber an Element of Division, not of Union . . 63 

4. The Revanche given up by the Republican Party . . 69 

5. The Deterioration of France emphasized by her Colonial 

Policy 75 

6. Imperfections of the System of Alliances. M. Hanotaux and 

M. Delcasse 78 

7. The Deterioration of France exemplified in the Politicians 

of the Third Republic: Great Talents keep away from Poli- 
tics ......... 83 

8. Anti-Clericalism the only Continuous Policy ... 90 

9. The Public Spirit : Illusions and Vulgarity .... 97 

I 898-1 905 

ID. Deterioration of France by International Socialism . . 105 

11. Dreyfusism: its Political Aspect often neglected yet All- 

important ....... 

12. Combism: Socialist Hegemony .... 

13. Combism and the Church : Religious Persecution 

14. Combism and Rome: a Short-sighted Policy 

15. Combism and the Army ..... 

16. Combism and Patriotism: M. Jaures and Germany: M 

Anatole France . , , . . . . .133 



105 
"3 
118 
122 
126 



Contents ix 



PAGE 

17. Combism and National Culture: the Levelling Spirit in 

Educational Methods . . . . . . -137 

18. Blindness of Combism. The Possibility of War unsuspected 143 

PART II. THE RETURN OF THE LIGHT 
Introductory 

The Tangier aflfair a flash of lightning. Since 1905 
French ideas in the air and no longer internationalist 
doctrines ......... 151 

Section I. Immediate Consequences of the 
Tangier Incident 

CHAP. 

1. Lifting up of the Veil: Consciousness of the Absurdity of 

Internationalism . . . . . . . -153 

2. Awakening of the Instincts of Self-Preservation . . . 156 

3. Revival of the Military Spirit . . . . . -159 

4. The Chamber Dethroned . . . . . . .163 

5. A Craving for Strong Men . . . . . .166 

6. Transformation of Newspapers: their Outlook becomes Wider 

and more Practical — Increased interest in Foreign Affairs . 1 70 

7. Rapid Diffusion of a New Mentality, the outstanding char- 

acteristics of which will be indicated in Section III, but the 
origins of which are traced in the following chapters . .172 

Section II. Intellectual Preparation of the New 
Spirit by the Experience of the Best 

This is the counterpart of the preparation for the intel- 
lectual and moral decadence of France traced in Part I to 
the philosophy and literature of the Second Empire . .174 

CHAP. 

1. Reaction against the Revolution. Influence of Taine. 

Hostility to J. J. Rousseau ...... 175 

2. Reaction against Scientism. Bankruptcy of Science . .184 

3. Reaction against Materialism . . . . . .186 

4. Reaction against Internationalism . . . . .187 

5. Success of Provincial Literature. Its Import and the Ideas 

underlying it . . . . . . . .190 



Contents 



PAGE 



6. Reaction against Socialism, not only from Conservative but 
from Syndicalist Quarters. Significance of M. G. Sorel's 
Works . . . . . . . . .193 

Section III. Evidences of the New Spirit 

Division A. Instinctive Manifestations of the New Spirit 

CHAP. 

1. A Patriotic Attitude forced even on Internationalists . .201 

2. Substitution of a European for a Party Point of View . . 205 

3. Anachronism of so-called Idealist Manifestations — M. Ana- 

tole France a Living Paradox . . . . .211 

4. Increased Distrust of Parliamentary Action . . .213 

5. Syndicalism reduced to its True Proportions . . -215 

6. A Higher Moral Standard forced on the Public Spirit . .217 

7. The Stage an apparent Anomaly. Explanation of the same . 220 

8. The Rising Generation — its Manly Characteristics . . 244 

9. The Rising Generation — it is not less French than its Pre- 

decessors — Appearances to the contrary explained . . 260 

ID. How far the Church is Responsible for the Transformation of 

France — Nature of its Activity — its Influence Analysed . 273 

Division B. More Conscious Manifestations of the 

New Spirit 

CHAP. 

1. Return of French Literature to its traditional Spirit — Failure 

of the Romanticists — Their ethos contrasted with that of 
Recent Writers — Taste of the latter for Clarity and Ele- 
gance — Moral Superiority of Literary Schools averse to 
Crude Realism ....... 298 

2. The Meaning of M. Bergson's Success: it is rather the Success 

of a Ivlethod and a Spirit than that of a Philosophy . . 325 

3. Restoration of Classical Studies; its significance . . . 330 

Conclusion of Part II 

The French obviously recovering from dangerous intel- 
lectual or moral diseases — less individualistic and more 
attentive to the public welfare — more alive to the interests 
of their country — no longer afraid of going to war if it is 
necessary. The question is whether this convalescence 
will result in complete recovery or in a relapse — nations have 
moods — the problem mostly, in the present stage of 
development, a political problem ..... 334 



Contents xi 

PART III. THE POLITICAL PROBLEMS AND 
THE FUTURE 

CHAP. PAGE 

1. The Problem of the Two Spirits — viz. the partisan spirit of 

the Radicals, and the patriotism represented by M. Poin- 
car^ or by men of M. Millerand's type — Apparent fail- 
ure of the latter — even their success would not mean the 
end of the confusion — The everlasting danger is the 
presence of a Chamber which represents its electors but 
imperfectly and does not represent France at all . . 341 

2. Is a Change of Regime probable? — Many believe it with- 

out sufficient grounds, yet certain facts evidently point 
that way — Universal expectation of and longing for a 
Rescuer — Its frequent transformation into sympathy 
with monarchical constitution — Possibility and facility 
of a coup d'etat, yet improbabiHty of its being accom- 
plished by either the Duke of Orleans, or Prince Napoleon, 
or republican leaders — Probability of a modification or 
even of a complete remodelling of the Constitution . . 348 

3. Inevitability of the Democratic Progress — The modern 

mind almost exclusively interested in the social and 
moral rise of the democracy — New conditions — Insuffi- 
ciency of the solution to the problem of classes pro- 
pounded by Integral Nationalism — Probability of the 
rise of the lower classes — Its danger, viz, humanitarianism, 
with the consequent disappearance of patriotism . 365 

4. A Moral Solution to the Political Problem— Enervating 

influence of the idea of universal peace, even of the notion 
of the instability of political conditions — Superiority of 
the moral point of view: its frequent indissolubility 
from political issues — We know nothing of the po- 
litical problems of the future, but we know that at 
the present moment humanitarianism is associated with 
inferior tendencies, whereas patriotism calls forth our 
best energies — It will be the same in the future when- 
ever poHtical problems are presented in the concrete to 
each individual — Necessity of Christianity in its virile 
aspects .,,...... 370 

PART IV. CONCLUSION 

France and the War of 1914 . . . . . • 381 

The import of this volume plain: the real weakening of France 
came less from the disaster of 1870 than from the literary 



xii Contents 



pac;b 



success of enervating ideas — Realization of this fact by 
intellectual leaders like Taine and Renan and their conver- 
sion to order — This change likely to transform even the 
masses, but slowly — Influence of the Tangier and Agadir 
aflfairs in 1905 and 191 1: awakened patriotism restores 
clear-sightedness and energy to all classes — The obstacle 
to this recovery : the moral inferiority of the Radicals who 
outweigh the influence even of President Poincar^ and 
stand for pacificism when war is an everyday danger. — 
This volume written in view of this situation: incerti- 
tude and anxiety 

Light thrown over the main positions of this book by the war 
of 19 1 4 — The same week sees the triumph of political cor- 
ruption in the acquittal of Madame Caillaux, and the 
triumph of pure patriotism in the response to the mobili- 
zation order — Noble characteristics of the public spirit 
— The background of the war wholly intellectual and 
moral — Patience and discipline of the nation. 

Consequences in the near future: two possibilities considered 
— Whatever the issue of the war may be, absolute neces- 
sity of a remodelling of the Constitution of 1875 to secure 
for France governments worthy of her new spirit — Eng- 
land ought to realize this necessity, and the present vol- 
ume has been written largely for this purpose. 

Probability of a new era opening for France. 

Index .......... 391 



FRANCE HERSELF AGAIN 



FRANCE HERSELF AGAIN 



INTRODUCTORY 

The object of this book is to investigate the trans- 
formation of the public spirit which has been visible 
in France since the beginning of the twentieth century. 
That there has been such a change it is impossible to 
deny or doubt, for everybody has felt it or heard of it, 
and every well-informed person who has a chance 
eagerly inquires concerning it. 

It is true that there are changes everywhere in 
Europe, and that disquietude and optimism rapidly 
succeed each other in almost every nation. Modern 
peoples are, like modern towns, in a condition of 
perpetual mutation. Instead of the deep stillness which 
seemed to hold the cities of old spellbound, there pre- 
vails an everlasting activity which alarms when it 
bodes destruction, and excites when it means recon- 
struction. What a change in the atmosphere of Eng- 
land since the last decade of the past century, when 
the author of this book thought he was almost physic- 
ally conscious of its tranquillity. Germany, which at 
a distance gives the impression of a huge body full 
of youthful and wonderfully directed life, is not free 
from multiform anxieties. The visitor who goes there 
under the impression that he will meet with nothing 

X 



2 Introductory 

except prosperity and the peaceful enjoyment of oppor- 
tunities is promptly undeceived. Even Italy, optimistic 
as her temperament makes her, and elated as she has 
often appeared lately, has to fight against uneasiness 
of mind as well as against tangible obstacles. 

It is true also that if it is difficult to satisfy oneself 
about the condition of one little town, nay, one family, 
the perplexity is infinitely increased when a nation is 
the object of inquiry. Day after day the observer is 
placed in the presence of facts which do not tally with 
his previous inferences, or hears people whose impres- 
sions are at variance with his own, or unexpectedly sees 
the whole political outlook wear an appearance which 
disconcerts his anticipations. Sometimes he feels in- 
clined to question the possibility of generalizing from 
his scanty observations about a portion of the globe of 
which his mental as well as his bodily vision can only 
embrace a depressingly narrow horizon; and he goes 
back to the popular notion with which every one of us 
has started, that where millions are unknown and even 
invisible, it is useless to speculate as if unity were a fact. 

Yet, in spite of the fragmentary character of past 
history and of the kaleidoscopic nature of history in the 
making, experience — even the experience of a private 
citizen with no means of information besides the news- 
papers and his own curiosity — teaches us that com- 
munities have an intellectual and sentimental life like 
individuals, and that the phases of this life can be as- 
certained. We find in the long run that a collection of 
clippings from the press enables us to watch new facts 
and their consequences without much surprise. We 
gradually become aware that only one individual in a 
hundred really matters as a subject of observation; we 
see that even the masses are in many manners within 



Introductory 3 

our grasp; we can tell how quickly — I should say how 
slowly — literature and philosophy will filter down to 
them; and we see that several phenomena — war and 
the fears of war, taxation, the ups and downs in public 
morals — bear immediately upon them; we find that 
owing to new conditions such as territorial unity, cen- 
tralization, the diffusion of the press, the diffusion of 
teaching through the school, and of opinion, thanks to 
the passage of most citizens through a regiment ; owing 
also to the wider distribution of riches and the influence 
of politics over finance — which even the rudest mind 
can perceive — the political intelligence of what is going 
on in a cotmtry is no longer the privilege of a few edu- 
cated people, and consequently national reactions are 
more rapid. All this satisfies us that what is called the 
life of a nation is not a mere succession of collective 
moods, but a reciprocal reaction of facts over ideas 
which proper attention can trace. 

I intend in this volume chiefly to describe the 
amelioration which the moral and intellectual condi- 
tions of France have shown with startling rapidity since 
the Tangier incident in 1905; but, as this improvement 
cannot be separated from its environment, I shall have 
to preface this investigation with an account of the 
previous deterioration of the country ; and as the foreign 
inquirer seems, very rightly, interested above all in its 
duration, I shall conclude by pointing out how inti- 
mately its chances are bound up with some political 
problems. 

It will appear, on the whole, that after being for 
years — more than fifty years — almost exclusively a 
groimd for experiments, France wants to be a nation 
once more. She is like a man whom philosophy or 
science, mere intellectual pursuits, have absorbed until 



4 Introductory 

some great sorrow unexpectedly makes him feel that 
he has a heart as well as a brain, and has to live as well 
as think, or think in a way that will fit him for life. 
We shall see this noble country, distracted and gradu- 
ally corrupted by false ideals and low morals, suddenly 
realizing that while she stayed idle at home, wasting 
the precious hours in mere talk, others were scouring the 
world and gathering power whereby her independence 
appeared to be threatened. The subject of this book 
is entirely human ; it is nothing else than the story of an 
error and of the awakening from it, with all the aston- 
ishments, hopes, and uncertainties which generally 
attend such crises. 



PART I 
THE DETERIORATION OF FRANCE 

SECTION I. — UNDER THE SECOND EMPIRE 
SECTION II. — UNDER THE THIRD REPUBLIC 



SECTION I 

THE DETERIORATION OF FRANCE UNDER THE SECOND 

EMPIRE 

I. It was Unexpected 

Shortly after his accession in 1852, the Emperor 
Napoleon the Third, addressing an audience at Bor- 
deaux, uttered these remarkable words: "France is 
happy, Europe may live in peace. " Perhaps no speech 
could be found in the whole history of France to hold 
so much quiet pride and consciousness of power. This 
was no brag. The nephew of Napoleon the First had a 
right to speak of France as a war or peace maker; the 
man who, himself a Revolutionist once, had just re- 
stored order by securing more power than anybody 
had commanded since Louis XIV, was in a position to 
appreciate the benefit to Europe of regarding France as 
something else than a hotbed of dangerous ideas. 

France had only one rival in Europe — ^that was 
England. Russia was still a far-away semi-Asiatic 
country ; Germany did not exist, it was only a word, or 
at best an idea, and Prussia, exhausted by her military 
expenses and still ignorant of shipping and industrial- 
ism, was a byword for poverty; Italy, like Germany, 
was only a hope ; as to Austria, she was old and childish, 
and beset with so many difficulties that she hardly 

7 



8 The Deterioration of France 

counted. So France and England had the whole field 
to themselves, and as there were no clouds, the new 
Emperor expressed only an actual fact when he spoke. 

To-day the same sentence would sound like a chau- 
vinist absurdity. Certainly it still belongs to France 
as to any other nation to let war loose and set Europe 
ablaze, but she has lost the privilege of imposing peace 
at her will. The map and statistics of Europe have 
changed in the last sixty years ; Germany and Italy are 
no longer abstractions, and Austria must blame herself 
if she has lost her chances. France is stronger than she 
herself imagines; her geographical position, her wealth, 
her revived military spirit, her immense diplomatic 
possibilities if she would only see them, the power 
dormant in her Catholicism, the prestige of her civiliza- 
tion and culture, are unique assets ; but she is only one 
in the European concert, and she must trust to the 
future, to the development of the good points in her, 
and of the weaknesses in her rivals to regain her former 
position. A great falling off! and one which is made 
more painful the moment we cease to view the present 
situation in its historic perspective to advert to the 
sickening details of everyday politics. 

What has happened? Is it merely that the world 
has been moving, and that, with the growth of certain 
great forces such as the attraction of languages and 
nationalities, France has been left behind without any 
real fault of her own? Asking the question is answering 
it. Even people who know history superficially have a 
feeling more comprehensive than mere data that France 
has made havoc with her own chances; and when they 
are asked more definite questions about the manner 
in which this self-destruction was brought about, a 
vague admiration for intellectual daring and a vague 



Political Ideas of Napoleon III 9 

dread of its consequences tell them that this country 
lost through the unwise love of dangerous ideas. 

2. Political Ideas of Napoleon III 

It is surprising that at least a medallion of Napoleon 
the Third should not be seen on the pedestal of the 
numberless statues erected to Cavour in almost every 
Italian town. Napoleon was quite as devoted to the 
cause of Italy as the great Piedmontese. He had started 
life as a carbonaro, and the dream of his ripe years was 
to see the Italia Una. This kind and good man, who 
loved his country, and for several years could entertain 
the delusion that he had brought it to a degree of 
splendour and prosperity unknown even under his uncle, 
was the predecessor of the shortest-sighted Republican 
statesmen in his devotion to ideas and complete dis- 
regard of their political consequences. It may be to his 
credit that he gave the world a great example of 
Idealism, but monarchs are not expected to be Ideahsts ; 
on the contrary, their subjects look upon them as the 
representatives of their interests, and pray that they 
may never lose sight of realities. Napoleon, lost in his 
vision of a noble nation restored to existence through 
his efforts, did not see that he was preparing a rival for 
France if the new nation happened to be more practical 
than idealistic and grateful. And when, in fact, Italy 
had become a reality, he was imprudent enough to 
connect her interests with those of Prussia, and, after 
helping Italy into the world, he paved the way for the 
advent of Germany. 

His was a strange reign, all brilliance to the super- 
ficial observer, full of the seeds of catastrophes in the 
unseen reality. And it seemed as if Fortune were 



10 The Deterioration of France 

labouring to hide the snares under incredible pieces of 
luck and dazzling appearances. The French armies 
would leave for the Crimea without knowing where 
they were to land, without even a map of the shores 
they were seeking, and on arriving they would discover 
a beautiful bay which seemed made for their purpose. 
They started for the struggle against Austria in North- 
ern Italy, a country full of rivers, without bothering 
about a pontoon-train; but the mistake was obviated 
on the spot, and victories succeeded victories without 
any disappointment. The bravery of officers and men 
was unequalled, and seemed to do duty for everything 
else. A hundred thousand men were killed in the 
Crimean campaign, as many more in the everlasting 
skirmishes of the Mexican War, but the country hardly 
minded; it seemed intoxicated with daring and gallan- 
try, and took sacrifices light-heartedly. It was the 
same in everything; somewhat gaudy appearances de- 
ceived in peace as in war. Three years before the 
catastrophe of 1870, the Exhibition of 1867, the com- 
mercial and industrial prosperity, the visits of sover- 
eigns, the gigantic rebuilding of Paris by Haussmann, 
impressed the country with the semblance of grandeur, 
while all the time the future was being undermined 
by the most unscrupulous of men of genius, Bismarck, 
and the crisis was already within reach. The Emperor 
saw the danger. The last years of his reign were 
darkened by the daily growing Prussian cloud, and his 
fears alone save him from having been a dupe rather 
than an idealist; but this is a poor set-off against the 
ruin of one's own country. Napoleon will remain 
responsible for the great changes after which the 
European map showed an expanded Italy and Germany 
and a shrunken France. 



Spread of Dangerous Notions ii 

3. Spread of Dangerous Notions under the Second 

Empire 

Territorial losses and political degradation are as 
bad for peoples as failure and consequent poverty 
sometimes are for individuals. All weakening tends to 
further weakening, and it is unfortunate for a nation 
to know that its voice has lost influence in the councils 
where it used to carry great weight. The inclination 
which defeat leaves behind is towards vain agitation 
much more than towards revenge. The decadence of 
nations is seldom accompanied with struggles against 
conquerors or oppressors, but nearly always with in- 
ternal dissensions, intrigues, or mere idle philosophizing. 
So the secondary rank to which the imprudence of 
Napoleon III, combined with the increasing population 
of several of her rivals, reduced France, has been, not 
merely a political falling off. From the ethical point 
of view, discernible in the history of nations as in that 
of each of us, this country ran considerable risk of being 
a loser, even if it had had no other germ of degradation 
than its diminished power. But other germs did exist 
which were to develop with terrible rapidity, and which 
will at present become the chief object of our study. 

It is true that France had not waited till the time of 
Napoleon III to imbibe those dangerous ideas which 
poison the life of a community and stay in its veins 
long after they have ceased to be frequently expressed. 
The ferment of incredulity which it is not difficult to see 
in so much of the less-known seventeenth century lit- 
erature, the theory of indefinite progress of the En- 
cyclopaedists, the individualism of Rousseau, had been 
sufficiently active to result in nothing less than the 
great Revolution. Michelet, Quinet, Comte, Cousin, 



12 The Deterioration of France 

ami JoufTroy had hcx-otiu^ fanunis under the reign of 
Louis Philippe. 

It is even true that, excepting the most attentive 
olx^ervcrs, people must have been inchned to look upon 
the Second Empire as a more rc^ligious period than any 
since the beginning of Die niiu^tvnth century. Had it 
not hccn for the Roman complication in the Italian 
queslit>ii which imcxpcctcdly placed the Imperial Gov- 
ernment in the ])osition of an enemy of the Papacy, no 
regime would have had so many rights to tlie title of 
champion of tlu^ Church. The Emperor himself was 
not a,n anliMil C'nlliolic, hut the Empress was, and the 
aliuospluMc of their C\>in-t was incomparably more 
rclii^ious than that of the Court of Louis XVI; the 
pi)lit ical ordci- was bas(Hl on belief, and the clergy were 
so iulhuMitial that even now anti-clericalism looks to 
thost^ days much tnon^ than even l(> the Restoration to 
liml instances of exaggerated Church interference; the 
lycrcs were more or less overtly given up to imbelievers, 
but [\\c i^UMuentary schools were practically in the 
hands of the bishops, ami ollicial literature was re- 
spectful of dt)gma; when the sittings of Parliament 
became public, it appeared that the immense majority 
of tlu> uitMubcrs \\\MC ortlunU^x and a great many of 
them earnest Catholii-s, atul when Saintc-Bcuve, in his 
last phase, aiul tlu^ Prince jcrome-Napolcon attacked 
the C^luux-h in [\\c StMuitc the scaiuial was cmummuous. 
To all intents and purposes the authorities dm-ing the 
SixH'nid l<>mpire ditl not separate either perfect civism 
or perfcet morality fnnn the practice of Catholicism; 
ami anti-religious philosophy, literature, ov criticism 
were discouraged and, so far as possible, prevented. 

It is highly probable, therefore, not only that the 
Emperor was in no wise responsible for the deeply 



spread of Dangerous Notions 13 

anti-Christian intellectual conditions I shall presently 
describe, but was even hardly aware of them. He sur- 
vived the War of 1870 by three years, and from his 
place of exile at Chislehurst he could follow the ad- 
mirable work of political regeneration which Thiers and 
the National Assembly carried on. He saw Prance 
diminished through his fault, but he also saw that the 
country had never seemed more energetic, more sin- 
cerely religious, more appreciative of the moral element 
in its own life than it was during those first few and un- 
fortunately very brief years. No doubt he must have 
thought that if France had lost something of her terri- 
tory, her brain and heart were sound, and he must have 
died hoping that his error would soon be made good 
owing to the rare mental conditions which his govern- 
ment had done so much to create. 

Yet it cannot be questioned that the sceptical, 
pessimistic, nihilistic generations which we shall see 
leading France from bad to worse during the first 
thirty-five years of the Republic, the generations which 
gladly gave up living to dedicate themselves to idle 
thinking when they were educated, to low quarrelling 
when they were not, and completely forgot that their 
country was something else and something better than 
the place where they talked, strutted, enjoyed them- 
selves, or intrigued, are the offspring of the Second 
Empire. The spirit which Bourget in his early years 
felt in himself and deplored in others, properly analysed 
and traced to its causes will lead everybody — as it has 
this writer — back to philosophers, poets, novelists, or 
dramatists who flourished under Napoleon HI, and to 
whose noxiousness their successors added but little. 
The chief cliaracteristics of this spirit will be pointed 
out in the following chapters. 



14 The Deterioration of France 

4. Materialism 

The theory of materialism, which, even to-day, in 
spite of the success of Bergson, is all the philosophy 
of so many semi-educated people, from the village 
schoolmaster to the country doctor, belongs essentially 
to the Second Empire. It was taught in its crudity at 
the Paris Medical School, while men of the distinction 
of Littre and Taine gave it the coherence, elegance, 
and even austerity of a philosophical doctrine. It was 
a blending of Spinoza's and Haeckel's monistic me- 
chanism with the sensationalism of Condillac (rather 
than of John Stuart Mill), and Darwin's discovery- 
acted as a confirmatur. 

Its success, with the help of some scandal, was almost 
immediate and very rapid. Taine taught this doctrine 
with remarkable power because the effort of his whole 
life had been centred upon it, and he defended it with 
fascinating eloquence^ because the unconvincing and 
possibly hypocritical spiritualism of Cousin roused his 
irony and indignation. It promptly became the back- 
ground of the thought — if not of the teaching — of 
many young professors in the lycees, and it was very 
fortunate when a dash of Kantian moralism gave it the 
appearance of a faith. Littre and Taine were men 
whom even their most indignant opponents could only 
respect — the first saints latques canonized by a few 
thoughtful disciples ; but a system, the legitimate trans- 
lation of which is, in popular language, "There is neither 
soul, nor free will, nor God, the world is nothing else 
than matter and motion," is not conducive to sanctity. 

It resulted in the Stoic pessimism of Taine himself or 
Guyau wherever there was elevation enough to make 

'Vide Les Philosophes frangais. 



Materialism 15 

stoicism the alternative for epicurism; but even the 
refinement of Renan did not save him from a few utter- 
ances which to-day are regarded as vulgarity with the 
thinnest literary halo; and among people who were 
neither poor enough nor clean enough to escape from 
the lowering logicalness of such premises, the conse- 
quences were deplorable. In an admirable book which 
I shall have an occasion to quote more fully, La France 
Nouvelle, published in 1868, Prevost-Paradol said that 
the last barrier between France and practical, and no 
longer speculative, materialism was honour, and it was 
easy to infer from his tone that he regarded it as a poor 
defence against strong if inferior suggestions. 

Naturalism was the literary offspring of Taine's 
philosophy. He had said himself that in a chain of 
innumerable causes and effects there were some links 
which, properly chosen, studied, and described, were so 
representative as to enable us to dispense with con- 
sideration of the rest, and this method became almost 
immediately that of the Goncourt brothers and of 
Zola, whose note-books are strikingly similar to those of 
Taine. He had also said that analysis of passionate 
conditions in man was sure to reveal the gorilla hidden 
under superficial appearances, and in his Opinions de 
M. Thomas Graindorge the idea had been plentifully but 
decently illustrated. Under coarser pens the descrip- 
tion of modern life soon became a record of turpitude 
and ferocity. 

Taine was not a saint; he was only a noble nature 
with a devotion to work amounting to heroism, and, 
although his erudition, coupled with his logic, some- 
times resembles genius, he is not always intelligent. 
He never seemed to dislike Naturalism as a literary 
theory. His essay on Dickens, along with a hundred 



i6 The Deterioration of France 

others, shows it somewhat ludicrously. It is ridiculous 
to see this wizened old savant taking up the cudgels 
against the English novelist for a kind of love which, 
whatever it may be, is confessedly not legitimate love, 
and for brutality of descriptions. The severe expe- 
riences of 1870 and 1 87 1 were necessary to bring Taine 
to the correction of some of his ideas, and when he was 
preparing the two volumes on Intelligence he was as 
remote as possible from letting mere contingencies 
enter into his consideration. His philosophy was made 
more outspoken and fearless by another trait v^hich 
belongs to his contemporaries as well as to himself: 
the serene indifference to the moral consequences of 
theories. 

5. Indifference to the Moral Consequences of Theories 

Taine once expressed in very clear terms his attitude 
as a thinker: 

I have two selves [he said], one who eats, drinks, goes 
about his business, does his best not to be harmful, and tries 
to be useful. This one I leave at my threshold when I come 
home. Whether or not, he has opinions, a moral life, a hat 
and gloves like those of the public, belongs to the public. 
My other self, the one whom I let philosophize, knows 
nothing of the public. He has no idea that practical effects 
can be deduced from the truth. . . . 

"Aren't you a married man?" Reid will ask him. — 
"Not at all. You mean the other man, the one I left 
outside the door." — "Aren't you afraid of making 
Revolutionists of the French?" Royer-Collard asks in 
his turn. — "What do I care? Are there any people 
called French?" 



Indifference to Moral Results 17 

This means that a man who wants to get at the truth 
must think of nothing but the truth, and is sure to be 
hindered in his search if he lets any contingency inter- 
fere with the absolute. Taine was so sure of the unim- 
peachableness of his position that when in 1889, twenty 
years after the war which had changed his outlook in so 
many points, Bourget published Le Disciple, he was 
deeply perturbed. Bourget sets forth in his novel the 
moral responsibility of the writer, and Taine, seeing the 
immense success of the book, inferred that the views 
of the rising generation were at complete variance with 
his own, and that he had had his day. He resigned him- 
self to what he thought was inevitable, but his funda- 
mental belief was not shaken, and he went on with his 
work in patient perseverance without once asking 
himself, as Emily Bronte did about such a creation as 
Heathcliff, whether the philosopher, who is in duty 
bound to seek the truth without any foreign considera- 
tions, has the right to submit to an unprepared crowd 
all that he looks upon as the truth. 

Renan's attitude was somewhat different, but it 
resulted in the same effects. Taine said everything 
out of sincerity, and the habit gave his expression an 
austerity which is more impressive than winsome. 
Renan was a metaphysician. The discovery of the 
truth did not appear to him as something moral, some- 
thing on which other men have a claim. It was the 
fortunate encounter of the intelligence with light in the 
eternal fields. Like most men converted from Christ- 
ianity by what the apologetics of those days called, in 
a dangerous formula, divergences between the Bible 
and Science, Renan had been very much impressed 
by the extension which his scientific data gave to the 
life of the world. The earth had not received its first 



1 8 The Deterioration of France 

inhabitant some six or seven thousand years before our 
times, and its duration was not to be hmited by cal- 
culations made from prophecies in Revelations. Pop- 
ular belief in the milieus in which Renan had grown up 
would have it that as soon as the Gospel had been 
announced in every country, the end would come. The 
reigns of a dozen popes at most separated us from the 
Day of Doom. When this catastrophe should come, 
neither the thoughts of men, nor the map of the world 
would be very different from what they were at present ; 
it was absurd to imagine a vast philosophical or es- 
pecially theological development within such a short 
period. 

Against this idea, archaeology and philology placed 
another more in harmony with the infinity of space 
revealed by astronomy. Man was lost in the infinity of 
space, but he was lost also in the boundlessness of time. 
The world was not recent, it was amazingly old: man 
had not been on earth for a few but for countless 
millenniums; his career was not to be cut short in six 
or seven generations — it was to go on until the sun 
cooled or the atmosphere became deadly. Many times 
before the end should come would the face of the earth be 
modified, empires rise and fall, nations be exterminated, 
civilizations and languages be replaced. What, then, 
was the use of bringing immaterial details into the 
consideration of the infinite? What was patriotism, 
the instinct of one short hour in the life of the globe, to 
the soaring of the mind after the eternal? Only rude 
intellects could be satisfied with crawling along the sur- 
face of this poor planet ; as to Renan, he repeated that 
nothing mattered but what appeared important as 
seen from Sirius. 

It was inevitable that the lofty philosophy of such 



Humanitarianism 19 

notions should appear distinguished to numberless 
minds unequal to their perfect comprehension, and no 
less inevitable that their popular translation should be : 
if God and free will are empty words, patriotism is even 
more empty. 

6. Humanitarianism 

What Taine and Renan saw through the cold light 
of philosophy, others of a more poetic bent had seen 
before them in the glow of sentiment. The humanitar- 
ian propagandism of Lamennais, Lamartine, Hugo, 
Michelet and Quinet, and George Sand, which the 
author of VAvenir de la Science and the author of 
V Intelligence no doubt despised as mawkish literature, 
was only a reading of history which the least effort 
would transpose into metaphysics. 

It seems strange at first sight that the Romanticists, 
who had all of them begun life as Catholics and Royal- 
ists, should have become Democrats and Humanita- 
rians. And it is strange also that the transformation 
should have been brought about by a patriotic feeling ; 
yet so it was. The Restoration had been welcomed 
enthusiastically by Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Lamen- 
nais, and Hugo because it was full of promises; but 
when the promises were seen to remain promises, and 
when the reigns of Louis XVI H, Charles X, and Louis 
Philippe succeeded one another, without bringing any- 
thing more than peace — several times bought at the 
cost of national dignity — the great memories of the 
First Empire and the Revolutionary Wars appeared in 
glory, while the kings descended from the high throne 
which imagination and the doctrine of Divine Right had 
erected for them. Meanwhile Socialism found ex- 



20 The Deterioration of France 

ponents of intellectual power and moral dignity never 
equalled since, and the notion of the people, the poor 
blinded giant whom both his misery and his virtues 
^ made sacred, became as popular as he had been in 
Revolutionary days. Michelet was his historian, Hugo 
his bard, and Lamennais became more and more his 
prophet, while the brilliant Lamartine managed to be 
his orator and statesman. 

For years this love of the humble and ignorant 
was coloured with the atmosphere of the Gospel. 
Jesus was the Friend of all the suffering, and references 
to His words were frequent in poem and address. It 
was, according to the spirit of Christianity as well as 
to that of the Revolution, that as all men were brothers, 
all nations should be regarded as sisters. There ought 
to be no fratricidal contests between them, no jealousy 
about worldly possessions. One day certainly would 
come when, through the agency of the first among them 
that had proclaimed the Rights of Man and universal 
Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, they would be united 
in perfect goodwill and oneness of object. 

The Revolution of 1848 was the triumph of this 
Christian Humanitarianism. It seemed as if Socialism 
had only to begin rebuilding. The clergy were all 
Democrats and Republicans; everywhere the trees of 
liberty, the emblem of the new order, were planted by 
the parish priests outside their churches, and Louis 
Blanc preached through numberless interpreters in 
practically every pulpit. This great dream of liberty 
allied to the Gospel had only the duration of a dream. 
A terrified bourgeois reaction soon set in; Louis Bona- 
parte was its agent, and, as he was openly the champion 
of the Church, the clergy followed him. In less than 
three years, the Socialists and Humanitarians found 



Human itarianism 21 

themselves deserted and alone, often exiled from France, 
and the alliance between them and the Church was at 
an end. Lamennais had only to go on vaticinating as he 
had done for years; but Michelet, who had loved the 
simple religion of the mediaeval man, turned against it, 
and devoted the rest of his life to praise of the Revolu- 
tion and worship of Nature; while Victor Hugo gave 
vent in Dieu, le Pape, VAne, la Fin de Satan to the 
turgid anti-clericalism which made him appear and be 
named the Pope of Democracy. So, through no posi- 
tive fault of its own, Humanitarianism lost its Christian 
appearance and one great element of order and whole- 
someness. 

There remained another: its undoubted patriotism. 
Michelet and Hugo were convinced to the last, as 
Joseph de Maistre had been before them, though for 
different reasons, that France had a providential mis- 
sion which she alone could fulfil in the world. But such 
an idea can only be popular so long as appearances 
support it. Let any disaster belie it, and the notion 
which in poets can survive and even acquire a new 
strength will strike the humble in their broken spirit 
as a ridiculous farce. This is what happened in France. 
When, in 1870, power and eclat seemed to pass over to 
Germany, the bright vision of France as an apostle of 
liberty to the world, and of Paris as the Jerusalem of the 
Revolution, vanished. The Democrats found them- 
selves mostly anti-Christians and Internationalists, 
and of the creed of Humanitarianism only vague 
formulae subsisted, upon which unscrupulous politicians 
shamelessly lived until the advent of Syndicalism. The 
fraternity of peoples is synonymous with horror of war, 
and in times when the ideal is feeble and material crav- 
ings are strong, horror of war and death can easily 



22 The Deterioration of France 

become the cowardice which, dressed up by its superior 
representatives into some sort of philosophy, is pre- 
cisely what the Syndicalist Georges Sorel calls the 
"philosophy of the belly." Humanitarianism was, of 
course, far from this under the Second Empire; but it 
only waited for occasions to be transformed from a 
dream into the unmanly timorousness which we shall 
have to point out as a character of the Third Republic. 

7. Intellectual Hegemony of Germany 

A long time before Germany actually existed on the 
map as an empire, she existed as a civilization, and for 
that civilization nobody had more respect than the 
enlightened French under the Second Empire. Half a 
century earlier Madame de Stael had initiated, with her 
book De VAllemagne, not only a great literary move- 
ment, but an affectionate feeling which had constantly 
taken strength as it went. Germany was seen in a 
poetic light as the home of legend, of song, and of 
serene wisdom. Prussia, of course, was military, but, 
since Frederic the Great, it was regarded as a warrior 
in the service of philosophy, and, being a secondary 
power, one which played no part in congresses, it 
frightened nobody. So the notion of its guns and press- 
gangs and everlasting drilling did not interfere with the 
idea one formed of Germany as an ancient and peaceful 
land with something maternal in its name. Michelet, 
who hated England because of her treatment of Na- 
poleon, thought and spoke fondly of Germany on every 
occasion; Quinet, who, however, protested as early as 
1852 against what he called Teutomania, was a dis- 
ciple of Herder, and mirrored the German point of 
view in many passages of his books; Taine and Renan 



Hegemony of Germany 23 

were disciples of Hegel, and the latter owed all his 
Biblical foundation to the Tubingen School; a great 
many Protestants, French, and Swiss, studied in Ger- 
many; and Strasbourg, with its Faculty of Theology 
and its celebrated Revue, was a sort of neutral spot 
where German thought was dressed in the French 
language. 

So Germany caused no alarm as a neighbour, and 
was an object of great reverence as the country in the 
whole world where ideas reigned the most exclusively, 
and where philosophy and criticism enjoyed the great- 
est liberty. The idea of dangers arising from too much 
freedom of speculation did not occur to anybody. 
Germany, with her thousands of thinkers, produced 
patriots; she did not produce one Revolutionist. The 
intellectual light she radiated could not but combine 
in a most happy manner with the passion for liberty 
inborn in the French. 

It seems almost incredible nowadays that this partial- 
ity for Germany was shared by many people with whom 
mere scientific considerations counted little. French 
society, the brilliant "world" of i860, doted on the 
German and especially the Prussian aristocracy. The 
latter were constant visitors to Paris and Biarritz, while 
the French year after year met them at Baden; the 
Regent of Prussia, who was to become the first German 
Emperor, was welcomed at Compiegne as a Wagner 
hero, and no diplomat was more popular than Bismarck 
at a time when diplomats were universal favourites. 
Prussian politics were not watched, as no foreign 
politics were the object of much attention in those days, 
and sympathy with the diplomats did not go beyond 
admiration for their manners and their linguistic abili- 
ties; but everybody wished Prussia well, hoped she 



24 The Deterioration of France 

would supplant Austria in the German confederacy, 
felt as the Emperor that the very irregularity of her 
geographical outlines was a pity, and probably was in- 
clined, with M. de Persigny, to advise the Prussian 
statesmen to keep their army in constant readiness. 
About, who, however, was a wide-awake person, printed 
in i860 that he longed to see a Germany of thirty-two 
million people near our eastern frontier, and nobody 
thought him foolish. 

Meanwhile Bismarck was playing his game with an 
intelligence which would be frightening if the lack of 
intelligence of most of his dupes were not ridiculous, 
the unity of the German lands was prepared by mil- 
itary agreements between the German sovereigns, the 
Prussian army was in as good a condition as any 
Persigny might desire, and the war which was to 
push France out of the first rank was only a question 
of opportunity. 

When the war did come, when that same Prussia 
which had been supposed to be the representative of 
warlike elegance and of metaphysical genius suddenly 
appeared to its bewildered admirers as the incarnation 
of brute force, the most extraordinary delusion of which 
a nation ever was the victim was dispelled, no doubt, 
but something remained: the frightened attraction 
which makes Lady Anne become Gloucester's wife in 
Richard III. The nervous attention to German 
methods, the long imitation of them years after 
1870, the abdication of some well-known profes- 
sors at the Sorbonne to the ideas and even the 
hobbies of German scholars, above all, the haunting 
terror of another war as unexpected as the first, were 
all bequests of a state of mind created under the Second 
Empire. 



Unwholesomeness of Literature 25 
8. Unwholesomeness of Literature 

Literature is the vehicle of philosophy. The intel- 
lectual tendencies we have noticed so far show a grow- 
ing attention to ideas in themselves and a growing 
contempt for their moral consequences, the considera- 
tion of which is looked upon as a prejudice. We shall 
now see the same indifference to the ethical point of 
view in the literature of the Second Empire. None 
could be further away from the really national and 
essentially patriotic expression which literature appears 
fundamentally to be. Writers of poetry or fiction are 
inclined to be cold and rigid; their attitude towards 
beauty is very much the same as that of Taine towards 
truth; there is no charity, no brotherly feeling in it. 
The anxiety to elevate one's contemporaries, so visible 
in the great classics of all countries, is absent here. So 
long as the craving of the artist for perfect expression 
is satisfied, he is content. 

The Parnassian school, when Sainte-Beuve founded 
it without thinking of giving it a name, was a reaction 
against the Romanticist bombast. The young poet 
wanted to be simple, intimate, and penetrating, while 
the others aimed at continuous sublimity — that was 
all. His successors were very different. Philosophy 
had taken a step when they began to write. The 
optimistic hope of better things which both the exalta- 
tion and the melancholy of the Romanticists revealed 
had made way for the utter darkness of Evolution. 
Science, which promised all sorts of wonderful im- 
provements here below, could not conceal that it had 
no promise whatever for the life to come ; in fact, there 
was no life to come, and the wisest course was to sub- 
mit to the prospect. So Leconte de Lisle and his 



26 The Deterioration of France 

numerous imitators were pessimistic and often un- 
utterably sad. What was their sole comfort, the one 
solace of their sunless lives? The pleasure they took 
in beautiful forms: at first the chiselled finish of the 
Poeomes Barbares, and gradually the marble-like 
achievements of De Heredia in Les Trophees. There 
were no dreams, no songs, no happiness of any kind 
there, but every word in these frigid performances was 
final. Such a poetry can never be popular, and the 
Parnassians were not. While the world around them 
was prosperous, pleasure-loving, and careless, they 
were gloomy and supercilious; the consequence was 
that the Second Empire, though it saw the birth of a 
great deal of verse, knew no poetry ; it was left to itself, 
and the only literature it enjoyed was fiction or dramas 
made to suit its tastes. 

The formula Vart pour Vart, which the Goncourt 
brothers made popular, was an appropriate expression 
for the attitude of the Parnassians as well as for their 
own; but it connoted something which the Parnassians 
had not felt in the same degree as themselves, viz., the 
sympathy with, and imitation of the ways, speech, and 
manners of, the painters and sculptors. They had 
been, like Theophile Gautier, pupils of painters, and 
they had more reasons than many of their copyists to 
retain something of their early environment. The idea 
of the literary man in the two classical ages had had 
nothing whatever in common with that of the superior 
artisans who were gradually to be called artists. They 
never mingled, never courted one another's approval, 
and did not suspect that a day would come when their 
ideals, critical principles, and often their technical cant 
might become the same. Diderot was probably the 
first literary man whom circumstances as well as in- 



Unwholesomeness of Literature 27 

clination brought into frequent contact with painters, 
and he bears the mark of his intercourse with them. 
But he seems to have been alone of his kind at the 
time. Writers were still, or aimed at being, men of 
the world with social experience and knowledge, whose 
only distinction was to use a pen more skilfully than 
mere society people. 

Between such men and the set in which Gautier and 
the Goncourts played off their familiarity with the 
world of artists there was a gulf. Devotion to art meant 
in i860 something esoteric and difficult, a divine elec- 
tion which gave the happy possessors of the gift a right 
not only to speak and judge but to live differently from 
the uninteresting crowd of Philistines outside. The 
evils of such a conception were numerous and various. 
It falsified the language of literature by substituting 
for it another which in nine cases out of ten applies to 
style or thought only superficially. It created the 
fallacy that the possession of a slang indicates a keen 
instinct or definite ideas. It exaggerated the confidence 
of artists and technicians, and while it unfortunately 
intimidated a few outsiders, it no less unfortunately 
planted in many others a desire to look like those 
brilliant Bohemians. A great deal of the insincerity 
nowadays rampant among literary or would-be literary 
people owes its origin to childish ambitions born in those 
days. And this was a lesser evil ; the superstition of the 
superiority of art — that is to say, the superiority of 
Doing or Appearing over Being — enticed countless 
people who might have been useful citizens away from 
the peaceful tenor of their careers and made mere 
pretenders of them. 

Pretence and imitation are the faults of the few 
people who are born with ambitions but with insufficient 



28 The Deterioration of France 

gifts, and one may imagine that they did not spread to 
the mass of the pubHc. It may be so, and it may also be 
that pretence and insincerity are more contagious than 
one is apt to suppose. But the chief characteristic of 
the Hterature of the Second Empire was one which did 
not appeal to the few but to the many, and in a subtle 
unavowed manner which is the most effective of all. 
What is, in fact, the essence of that great literary 
doctrine. Realism, which the talent of Flaubert, forced 
upon all the writers of his day? It has been defined in 
numberless formulae, some of which have been made 
to look as distinguished as the noblest definitions of 
Idealism, But, in fact, it is a strong resolve on the 
part of the artist to treat as an artistic matter all that is 
part of man and life. People often quote that charming 
and to-day quaint definition of a romance by some 
Goethean heroine: "A book with characters one would 
be glad to resemble." It was at the bottom of most 
literary conceptions, but the idea was suddenly re- 
versed. A writer could not set about describing all, 
without an impulse to dwell on what had been so far 
concealed, so that realistic novels were from the first — 
from the appearance of Madame Bovary — the descrip- 
tion of sentiments and actions which, so far, had been 
the very opposite of such as moved to imitation. 

The effects of this kind of literature are best under- 
stood to-day, less on account of historical investiga- 
tions into them than from a comparison with the moral 
atmosphere produced at the present day by a totally 
different style. I shall, in the course of this book, have 
to mention a return of some young writers to the high 
plane of psychology worthy of the name, the descrip- 
tion of noble soul struggles. We feel, on opening these 
books, that underlying the narrative is a conception 



Unwholesomeness of Literature 29 

of life which compels us at once to take sides with the 
good against the evil. The very rhythm of the sen- 
tences informs us that easy-going indulgence is not in 
keeping with the mood we are expected to enter, and 
our pleasure is constantly mixed with something more 
austere than pleasure, and yet persuasive. 

Exactly the reverse must have been the impression 
produced on the first readers of Flaubert and the 
Goncourts : realism places you on a low plane. Nobody 
is expected to be especially attentive to his manners in 
an inferior society, and when the realistic novel does 
not introduce us to undesirable company, it at least 
makes us familiar with that part of ourselves of which 
we are the least proud. If we take pleasure in it, this 
pleasure will be a sort of confession, the admission that 
whatever may be the weaknesses or uglinesses of our 
nature, we think them quite as capable of being made 
interesting as our nobler sides. With a Flaubert the 
idea, of course, can be entirely artistic and consequently 
defensible; but how many readers have enough of the 
artist in them to counterbalance a despicable sort of 
indulgence? Certain it is at any rate that what the 
Second Empire called its sincerity prepared, if it did 
not give rise at once to, the cynicism of the Third 
Republic, and that kind of sincerity was begotten of 
the outspoken realistic novel. 

On the whole, the indifference to moral consequences 
of the philosophers, the heartlessness of the Parnassians, 
the contempt for the poor inartistic man familiar to the 
school of the Goncourts, and the indifference to the 
matter of art of the Realists, were the same feeling in 
various guises; they all showed a serene certainty that 
the intelligence of man can take its pleasure in itself 
irrespective of any effects upon life. Such resolute 



30 The Deterioration of France 

intellectualism means a narrowing of the human out- 
look, though it may appear to be highly philosophical, 
and it also means the acceptation of a restricted in- 
fluence. It is not surprising, therefore, that while the 
French as individuals sacrificed the will to the intellect 
and activity to contemplation, France as a nation was 
preparing her own decadence and the rise of her 
enemies. 

9. Anti-Christianity 

The literary and philosophical tendencies which I 
have just reviewed went far to create a contempt for 
humble, workaday activity, and an exaggerated esteem 
for life in an ivory tower, as the phrase used to go, but 
they were negative rather than positively scandalous, 
and often made their way unsuspected. Meanwhile, 
the orderly appearance of affairs, remained the same; 
the Government supported religion and morals in all 
their manifestations, Catholicism was practically a 
State doctrine, and public education — excepting in the 
lyceeSy where the spirit invariably killed the letter — was 
based upon it. 

It was the doom of the Second Empire that its 
appearances constantly belied its realities. While the 
Emperor showed evident reverence for Catholicism, 
and the Empress — a Spaniard by birth — was an ardent 
believer, while the Senate and Chamber and all the 
public bodies consisted largely of practising Catholics, 
while the religious processions in Paris and in all the 
chief towns were solemn functions attended by the 
army and at which most officials were anxious to be 
seen, Christianity had terrible enemies whose every 
effort was directed against it. 



Anti-Christianity 31 

The present Radicals, who are generally the sons 
of the Free Thinkers of those days, will have it that the 
fight with Catholicism ought to be called anti-clerical- 
ism and not anti-Christianity. If the bishops, they say, 
had not been as influential in civic affairs as the pre- 
fects, if the parish priests had not controlled the village 
mayor and the village schoolmaster, they would have 
been let alone, and there would have been no religious 
persecution in France. 

This is partly true. The paradox which gave too 
much power to the clergy in a country not passionately 
rehgious was certain to result in rebellion. But the 
anti-clerical pretence was only a help for a deep anti- 
Christian feeling which would have been active in any 
case, and was then violent, and by no means scientific. 
Nothing is more striking than the survival in cne 
country, or even in one milieu, of mental conditions long 
vanished in another country or in different surround- 
ings. The religious views of the French in the latter 
part of the nineteenth century ought in no case to be 
compared with those prevalent in Germany at the same 
period, and which we shall presently see Renan try to 
make popular. The speculative freedom which had 
reigned in the Protestant universities for more than a 
hundred years, when Renan became acquainted with it, 
had shocked but few people, and it had gradually sub- 
sided into the serenity which let pass unchallenged even 
the wildest theological hypotheses. 

The situation was very different in France. Here 
there was little question of the higher criticism or of 
scientific investigations into the origins of religious 
feeling; Voltairianism might be on the eve of its wane, 
but it was still supreme, and only its tone had under- 
gone a change. There were still the witty unbelievers 



32 The Deterioration of France 

who dressed up Lucretius or Celsus in epigrammatic 
modern French, the numberless journaHsts or lycee 
professors who took their cue from Paul-Louis Courier, 
Stendhal, Merimee, About, or their imitators, but 
oftener this eighteenth-century levity had been dis- 
placed by the violence bequeathed to the new genera- 
tions by the Revolutionists. Michelet and Quinet were 
historians and intelligent, but they were violent; Pa- 
trice Larroque, who compiled a laborious Encyclopaedia 
of well-worn objections against Christianity, was vio- 
lent; so were the writers on the staff of Le Steele, and 
so were the editors of the many reimpressions of Le 
Testament du Cure Meslier, a breviary of unbelief which 
Voltaire had pruned of its worst provincialisms but had 
left full of its gall. 

Beside this turbid stream of opposition coming from 
anywhere and swollen anyhow, the dispassionate dis- 
cussion of men like Jouffroy or Comte had but little 
influence. It was far beyond the reach not only of the 
people but of the bourgeois, and yet, unknown as it 
remained in its real import, it acted on imaginations 
and helped the belief that the best intellects were rid 
of religious dogmas. 

It seems strange to us after fifty years that Sainte- 
Beuve, the smooth writer, the man of universal sym- 
pathies, the apparently reverent historian of Port 
Royal, should have been a rabid and occasionally a 
coarse anti-clerical, but so he appeared in several of his 
political addresses and in his conversation. He was as 
much two men in this respect as Anatole France, who is 
a living contradiction. Taine often shows violence in 
the early portions of his correspondence, when medita- 
tion had not blunted the edge of his Ecole Normale 
spirit. But what is more incredible than all the rest is 



Anti-Christianity 33 

that Renan, the very name of whom is synonymous 
with tolerance and abhorrence of partisanship, was 
bitter and impatient in his first articles, and appealed 
to the public of the decade beginning in i860 in a 
manner which history alone can make anything but 
inconceivable to us. 

What is the Vie de Jesus to our contemporaries? 
The first book which made it possible for them to be 
free from the central belief of the Church, without 
making them narrowly sectarian or irreligious, it was 
the first appearance in this country of incredulousness 
without harshness, of science without pugnaciousness. 
It seemed as if Voltaire, before being reincarnated in 
Renan, had been converted by Chateaubriand, and 
had then been vouchsafed more intelligence of Christ- 
ianity than either Voltaire or Chateaubriand had ever 
possessed. The Vie de Jesus appears as a sort of com- 
promise which put an end both to a naive sort of faith 
and to a crude sort of criticism. The book has long 
ceased to be discussed; it is superannuated in almost 
every part, and yet people do not conclude, as they 
would have done fifty years ago, that Renan was an 
amateur who borrowed from the Germans and dis- 
guised his incompetence under a veil of literature. 
The limits, but also the extent, of Renan 's erudition 
are well known, and a famous ecclesiastical historian 
who is a good judge of learning, Monseigneur Duchesne, 
was not afraid to say that his chief book could not have 
been written without Les Origines du Christianisme. 
The reproach which is now attached to Renan is not 
one of inadequateness ; it is rather moral. Renan 
gradually became too much of a dilettante to appear as 
a likely appreciator of religion. Even his reverent atti- 
tude is criticized. It has been said of Chateaubriand 



34 The Deterioration of France 

that he was the loving grave-digger of Catholicism; 
Renan leaves the impression of a grave-digger who had 
been a party to the murder of the man he was burying, 
and, for all his decency, felt rather guilty. 

Completely different was the background in 1863. 
To the crowd which began to assault the CathoHc 
Church in France, religion had been presented as a 
dupery, and dogma as an opposition to science. Renan 
was one of the few brave men who did not fear, in spite 
of the Government, to say what they had to say about 
religion, its origins, and what was called its deforma- 
tions. He was not a philosopher made popular by being 
also an artist — he was a soldier, and the atmosphere 
about him was the atmosphere of a fight. What the 
public saw in the publication of the Vie de Jesus was an 
act of defiance. The historian had just been appointed 
to a chair at the College de France. He spoke in his 
inaugural lecture of Jesus as an "incomparable man." 
These words brought about a storm of protests, and 
eventually the Professor's dismissal, but they also 
were regarded as the challenge of Free Thought to the 
Church and taken up as a password. As a consequence 
the Vie de Jesus, which is only the development of these 
two words, was misapprehended by thousands of its 
so-called admirers and applauded as a blasphemy, 
instead of being, as it is to-day, held unpleasantly 
cautious and crafty. 

Renan must have suffered from being pressed into 
the service of overheated politicians, and being praised 
by people who would repeat Jaclard's speech: Be 
atheists first, and then you can be revolutionists. Two 
years after the publication of the Vie de Jesus narrow 
anti-Catholicism appeared in the foundation of the 
Solidaires, who thought it a remarkable bravado to 



Decadence of Morals 35 

insist on being buried without a priest, and of the Ligue 
de V Enseignement, the first step towards atheistic teach- 
ing in the elementary schools. This was the beginning 
of the fight against the Church which was to fill most of 
the history of the Third Republic. In this fight Renan 
took no further active part, and superficial observers 
were tempted to look upon him as rather a friend than 
a foe of religion, but the Vie de Jesus gradually began 
to be read in the spirit of its author, and this spirit 
proved to be even more destructive than bare-faced 
opposition. The brilliant butterflies in Parisian society 
were only too inclined to adopt a view of religion which 
turned respect merely into a sort of elegance, and this 
first initiation into Renanism prepared them for its 
developments. When the French are uncertain about 
their religious views they are too often uncertain about 
all the rest, and Renan in his latter phases taught them 
nothing but uncertainty. So whether irreligion meant 
violence and revolution, or scepticism and tolerance, it 
was calculated to divide and weaken. In fact, division 
and enervation soon made their appearance, and the 
catastrophe of 1870 was not enough to bring back union 
and energy. The Third Republic only developed the 
germs planted under the Empire. 

10. Decadence of Morals 

The combination of the appearance of dangerous 
theories with the disappearance of the most powerful 
moral break — that is to say, belief — is sure to result in 
a moral falling off. This was not evident from the 
first under the Second Empire, because the authorities 
remained loyal to principles and there was no display 
of licentiousness. Compared to what we have seen in 



36 The Deterioration of France 

the past twenty years, the so-called immorality of the 
Empire stril<:es us as severe restraint. The stage in 
the days of Labiche, Halevy, and Meilhac was innocent, 
and would appear tame to-day in the most puritanic 
countries; society, in spite of its wild craving after 
pleasure, tolerated no indecency; the nude at the 
Salons was rare and artistic, and, in spite of this, fre- 
quently blamed. There were still a great many families 
in which austere traditions were kept up; the feverish 
excitement, the endemic dissipation of 1865, left them 
as untouched as the ideas of the Encyclopaedists left 
untouched the homes of our great-great-grandfathers. 
In a word, the appearances were universally good. 

Unfortunately appearances make a poor defence 
against deep-rooted realities, especially when the public 
institutions do not help in counteracting them. Philo- 
sophy was weakening, poetry had no elevating virtue in 
it, fiction was the vindication of lawlessness; it was 
impossible that morals should remain high very long. 
But there were other elements of corruption in the 
economic conditions. It was Guizot who had said: 
"Make money, enrich yourselves"; but the advice was 
too vague in the days of Louis Philippe, and the lower 
classes still remember this reign as a time of penury. 
The industrial prosperity of France dates from Na- 
poleon III. Of course the machines and the facility of 
imports were responsible for it, — no sovereign can have 
any more influence on these conditions than on the 
weather — but Napoleon's turn of mind was favourable 
to a great commercial development. His humanitarian 
views made for peace and for peaceful transactions ; the 
very wars to which his philosophy — much more than 
a military propensity — compelled him, show that his 
tendency was to seek the greatness of France in some- 



Decadence of Morals 37 

thing different from mere territorial expansion, in the 
diffusion of influence through ideas and improved ma- 
terial conditions; the resolute orderliness of his govern- 
ment during its first eight or ten years, along with a 
love of the humble which appeared in excellent social 
laws, made industrial unrest almost impossible. All 
these conditions enabled the French to make the most 
of their has de laine, just at the moment when a small 
capital found unique opportunities. 

It may be that at the time of Colbert, or in the early 
days of Huguenot prosperity, the changes brought 
about by a sudden influx of wealth would have been 
made less intoxicating, thanks to the prevalent severity 
of manners; but the Second Empire was a time of 
childish levity, and the example of unrestrained enjoy- 
ment of money came from the very highest ranks of 
society. The Court thought of nothing except amuse- 
ment and display, and the numberless nouveaux riches 
whom finance or industry pushed every day to the fore- 
front had all the naive vanity of their class. The con- 
sequence was an irritating display of luxury on all sides, 
and a universal emulation in acquiring the means of 
shining, with the inevitable unscrupulousness arising 
under such circumstances. Money became the sole 
object in the ever-increasing forgetfulness of the happi- 
ness which can be obtained upon a modicum of money ; 
the country was deserted for the towns, especially 
Paris, which, in its new and occasionally vulgar de- 
velopment, was a symbol and an appeal; and the scourge 
invariably attending the development of a nation in 
the direction of material ease — depopulation — made its 
appearance. 

Yet the Second Empire cannot be described as an 
epoch of widely-spread corruption. Immorality still 



38 The Deterioration of France 

revolted, and several famous judicial cases prove it. 
It was rather a period of bubbling insouciance, with a 
light-hearted acceptance of an inferior moral standard 
which seemed inevitable for the time being, and which 
people were as remote from advocating as from re- 
nouncing. The cynicism of conscious deterioration — the 
almost inseparable companion of Malthusianism — was 
to come later. But all the germs of this degradation had 
been sown broadcast long before 1870, and hundreds 
of moralists had pointed out their dissemination. 

1 1 . The End of the Empire 

The Second Empire has left the memory of a happy, 
brilliant epoch. If the chances of the Bonaparte 
dynasty have appeared at various periods, and even at 
present appear, greater than those of the Orleans family, 
it is not, as people will often imagine, owing to the 
afterglow of the first Napoleon, but to the popularity 
of his nephew. The working classes had never been 
treated as kindly as they were under the legislation 
^ which bore the name of the Prince Imperial and made 
it beloved, and the unheard-of commercial expansion 
of those days made their lives incomparably happier 
than at any other period in the nineteenth century; 
after more than forty years, they have not forgotten it. 
As to the bourgeoisie and aristocracy, they had number- 
less opportunities for a life of luxury, which speculation 
or trade made it easy to keep up, and on which the 
brilliant Court at the Tuileries threw its eclat. The 
survivors of this age speak of it as one of those happy 
times during which men feel almost physically the 
/ enjoyment of living. All the men seemed witty, and 
all the women seemed beautiful. Literature counted a 



The End of the Empire 39 

few great names, the fame of which ennobled all the 
rest, but its characteristics were not greatness and 
elevation, which would have hardly been in keeping 
with the mood of the readers; abundance, facility, 
graceful ease, and cleverness with a dash of cynicism, 
of which people had not had time to grow tired, were 
what was craved and plentifully supplied. Everything 
was smooth and easy. 

Such an epoch is hardly one during which reflection 
and wisdom are likely to flourish. The fact is that, 
especially between 1855 and 1867, the French lived as 
much on illusions as on pleasure. Everybody seemed 
bent upon deceiving himself. The Emperor had his 
own dreams of a Europe that would consist of racially 
united portions, so happy in their union as not to wish 
for anything else. The Ministers were apt to catch a 
reflection from their master's beautiful ideology; when 
M. de Persigny advised the Prussian Minister of War 
always to keep his army ready, he thought he was speak- 
ing only in the general interest of Europe. Officers de- 
luded themselves about the army, as the Emperor did 
about the relation of France to her rivals; they were 
innocent of modern improvements, innocent of dangers, 
and only thought of bravery. Our soldiers had been 
successful in the Crimea, successful in Italy, and even — 
in spite of the final result — in Mexico ; why should they 
not be successful again? Were not Prussian officers to 
be seen year after year following the French manoeuvres 
at Chalons? If they did not feel that they had to learn, 
they would not take the trouble to go to school to 
others. 

So there was no ideal in the France of Napoleon III, 
but there was a great deal of ideology and a great deal 
of self-satisfaction. The only movement that had 



^>— 



40 The Deterioration of France 

something idealistic about it was the Repubhcan move- 
ment. Its promoters were either men who had seen 
1848, and never forgotten the divine enthusiasm which 
possessed the whole French nation until Bonaparte 
came and crushed it, or younger men who believed 
in Progress as implicitly as their elders believed in 
Fraternity. These enthusiasts had faith, but it was 
the faith which is as likely to mislead as to guide; there 
was no light in it — only the gleams which look so 
fascinating when they are reflected from all nascent 
ideologies. What was needed in the last years of the 
Empire was a clear eye to see that the danger of France 
did not come from lack of liberty but from the rapid 
growth of Prussia; the remedy was not mere warm- 
heartedness, but will-power, strength, and method. 
It will always remain as a blemish on the Republican 
group of 1 867 that they opposed the effort made by the 
declining Empire to improve its army, though three 
years later they were to clamour more loudly than 
anybody else : Guerre d outrance! 

While this blind optimism or as blind longing for 
something new prevailed among the masses, the highly 
educated were as far from the enlightening contact of 
reality; they did not live in clouds — far from it — but 
they lived in the stars, and the results were the same. 
The French politician and the French officer would not 
see that Germany was the enemy, but to Renan and 
Taine and their numerous followers, Germany was the 
friend. What did they care about artillery and com- 
missariat? Their business was with thoughts, with the 
interpretation of the past, and the anticipation of the 
future, and in all this Germany was their teacher, and 
they proclaimed themselves grateful disciples. It was 
evident to them from their knowledge of history that 



The End of the Empire 41 

only ideas have any chance of survival in the succession 
of facts. So they thought that speculation was as 
patriotic as action and immeasurably superior, and as 
— very different in this from their German models — 
they believed that patriotism as a mere sentiment is 
rather in the way of philosophy, they laid the founda- 
tions of anti-patriotism, imagining all the time that they 
were only building a temple to Truth. 

This admixture of light-hearted or even dare-devil 
optimism among the unthinking, and of ideology among 
their leaders, with the touch of dangerous enthusiasm 
added by the Republicans which is characteristic of the 
Second Empire, recalls almost invincibly the latter part 
of the eighteenth century. There was the same levity, 
the same enjoyment of life and pleasure, the same 
elegant materialism, in the brilliant butterflies at 
Versailles, side by side with the reckless speculation 
of the Encyclopaedists and the reforming audacity 
of Rousseau's followers. There was also the same 
indifference to matter-of-fact considerations, which, 
however, were in the long run to appear of more 
importance than high-flown philosophies. We shall 
see that, as the ideology of the EncyclopcBdia and the 
Contrat Social persisted long after the Revolution which 
they brought about, the ideology of Renan survived 
its exponent's disillusionment, and its effects went on 
long after competent judges had found it wanting. 
The spirit of the Third Republic we shall find to 
have been a strange blending of scepticism about vital 
verities and ineradicable belief in mere words which is 
only a development of the spirit of the Second Empire. 
But this development took place unknown to its very 
champions, and if we want to form an idea of the 
atmosphere of France towards 1867, we must think of a 



42 The Deterioration of France 

warm summer evening at the end of a day of pleasure 
in some not very refined Parisian quarter or seaside 
resort, with snatches from the bold conversation of gay 
philosophers attracted by the fun and yet despising it. 
The threats of a storm brewing above the horizon only 
a very few people perceived. 

Yet there were such clear-sighted observers, and 
their paucity did not make their anxiety lighter to bear. 
Strange to say, the Emperor, who had been so imper- 
vious to signs about which a man in his position ought 
not to have been mistaken, felt misgivings before his 
entourage had any. He realized that his imprudence 
could not but be punished by at least a severe trial in 
which he might yet be victorious, but which might 
also result in his ruin, that of his dynasty, and eventu- 
ally that of France itself. The gentleness of his sway 
during the past years of his reign, the wistfulness with 
which he would listen to any advice, were signs that 
his mind was troubled, and that he tried to divide 
responsibilities too heavy for one man. While his sub- 
jects were revelling in carelessness, he was slowly 
wasted by care and disease, and this partly redeems 
the folly of his previous policy. 

Among the true patriots who had no illusions about 
the seriousness of the position to which not only 
political errors but the corruption of thought and 
morals had reduced France, there was one for whom 
the writer of this book feels the most sincere admira- 
tion, and concerning whom even comparative oblivion 
seems exceptionally unjust. Certainly, if Prevost-Para- 
doP had been fortimate enough to live in a time when 

' He was a journalist, but of exceptional culture, having been the 
schoolmate of Taine at the Ecole Normale, and revealing his rare 
gifts almost from the first. Shortly before the War of 1870, he was 



Paradol on France's Future 43 

his book had been a record of greatness rather than an 
anticipation of disaster, he would be looked upon as 
one of the masters of the language and one of the most 
astonishing readers of the future that ever held a pen. 
His book, La France Nouvelle, to which pride and 
patriotism alone prevented him from giving another 
more depressing title, was published in 1868, and in the 
precision of its conjectures leaves far behind all similar 
works of historic philosophy. Compared to it, the Con- 
siderations sur la France of Joseph de Maistre appears 
rhetorical, fanciful, and often wide of the mark. As a 
literary work it has a full right to be called a master- 
piece. No modem writing recalls so forcibly the 
earnestness and, at the same time, the perfection of the 
best ancients. Paradol wrote this book — it is not say- 
ing too much — with the blood of his heart, and yet with 
an intellectual self-control resulting in unfailing lu- 
cidity ; his pages are those of a Stoic, but there is more 
than emotion hidden under this apparent coolness — 
there is a mortal wound, and the quiet beauty of La 
France Nouvelle is that of a dying speech. An extract 
from the concluding chapter will show how clearly the 
French of 1868 might have read in it their portrait and 
their doom. 

12. ParadoVs Conjectures on the Future of France 

After examining the moral condition of France, and 
concluding that religion and the sense of duty no longer 
had any influence on its national life, but honour still 
subsisted in it as an element, undoubtedly weaker, of 

appointed French Minister at Washington. Both he and his son 
committed suicide on hearing of the French disasters. Paradol was 
only forty years old, and his son was not twenty. 



44 The Deterioration of France 

energy, Paradol went on to inquire into the political 
circumstances of the country. 

France, he said, is now drawing near the severest 
trial through which she ever had to pass. The dis- 
membering of Denmark, suffered by her in spite of the 
protests of England, and her countenancing Prussia 
against Austria, are facts which it is useless post 
eventum to discuss, but with which it is necessary to 
count. Another fact which is to be taken for granted, 
without going into its moral significance, is the effort 
of Prussia towards the unity of Germany. What, then, 
is the situation created for France by these facts? 
Will the progress of Prussia in Germany go on un- 
hampered, or will France attempt to stop it by a 
military intervention? 

Let us examine both alternatives, and, first of all, 
the hypothesis of a war between France and Prussia, 
whatever its outcome may be. 

Shall we defeat Prussia? It is a remarkable sign 
of the times that this question should be asked at all. 
The problem used to be: Can France resist the whole 
of Europe in a coalition? To-day, it appears that a 
contest between France and Prussia would be a danger- 
ous testing of our power. However, we may suppose 
that victory will remain with us. What should we do 
with it? Shall we abide by the principle of nationalities 
which has been the guiding idea of the policy of the 
Emperor, or shall we imitate Prussia in her treatment 
of Posen and Schleswig, by annexing Belgium and 
creating an independent kingdom on the Rhine? Either 
alternative offers considerable difficulties, for we shall 
be obliged to make war for nothing or to leave Prussia 
irritated and resentful. 

But victory may not be faithful to us, and we have at 



Paradol on France's Future 45 

present to view the possibility of a defeat. Supposing, 
then, that Prussia, alone or with the support of Russia, 
gets the better of us, who does not see that the greatness 
of France would be a thing of the past? France, of 
course, would not be swept clean away. The jealousy 
of all against her being once satisfied, the jealousy of 
the conquerors against one another, or that of the 
neutral powers against the conquerors, would incline 
them to let us subsist, helpless and disgraced, amidst 
our ruins. It is even possible that Alsace and Lorraine 
might not be taken away from us, but what was sure 
to be hopelessly taken away from us would be the power 
to oppose such a step the day our rival thought it 
advisable, and this day could hardly be long put off. 
Meanwhile the unity of Germany, helped by the pres- 
tige of the Prussian victory, would be achieved at once; 
Austria would become another Turkey ; and the Oriental 
question would promptly be settled without any 
reference to us. 

We now have to examine the other hypothesis, that 
of Peace — that is to say, the possibility of a non- 
interference of France in the presence of a continuous 
aggrandizement of Prussia. It is the less probable of the 
two. Not because the Prussian Government is likely 
to declare war or the French Government to wish it; 
there is little doubt but the chiefs of both States are 
honestly in favour of peace. But, whatever men may 
wish, things are such that they must bring on a war; 
it is impossible that Prussia, in spite of her prudence, 
should not take fresh steps towards the absorption of 
Germany, and no less impossible that the French 
Government should witness such a move without 
interfering. 

This fatal dilemma forces itself upon oiir minds even 



46 The Deterioration of France 

apart from the unexpected incidents which may at any 
moment render peace precarious. The more one thinks 
about it, the more evident it appears that neither 
philosophy, nor humanity, nor the firm resolve of 
governments can stave off a contest between expanding 
Prussia and France shut in between her old frontiers. 
As long as this shock does not take place, everybody 
feels that uncertainty must subsist, and that the claims 
of the rising nation to greatness, as well as those of the 
older power to influence, cannot be settled. In any 
case, France, if she succeeds, will pay with the blood 
of her children; if she fails, with her position and 
possibly her existence, for the mistake she made the 
day when the dismembering of Denmark began and 
was suffered to go on. 

Yet it is not absolutely impossible that peace may be 
preserved, but the consequences of inaction will be the 
same for France as those of a defeat. Whether the 
unity of Germany is accomplished before France in- 
different or before France humiliated, the result will be 
the irrevocable decay of French greatness. Fifty-one 
millions of Germans will be united under one flag, 
whereas France will count only thirty-six millions, and 
as the military forces of Germany are concentrated, 
disciplined, and provided with all the resources of 
modem science, in the new system of war, consisting 
in suddenly latinching enormous masses of men one 
against the other, the struggle will inevitably be 
disproportionate. 

Some people go on repeating: Why should we picture 
the future in such dark colours, why should not the new 
Germany turn out to be a peaceable community, ex- 
clusively attentive to commerce, industry, and litera- 
ture? Why should we not hope that the unification of 



Paradol on France's Future 47 

Germany will be the first step towards a broader fra- 
ternity of nations? This question can only be answered 
by another: Why should we, for the first time in the 
history of the world, see a great power stop in its growth 
from a mere sense of justice, respect the weak in their 
decadence, and forego without being compelled to it 
every desire of domination? This would be a miracle. 
You may be right, the same people insist, and it is 
probable that Germany will become one nation, that 
Austria will be dissolved, Holland annexed, and that 
all the great questions pending in the East will be 
settled without us, but, at all events, France will not he 
invaded. Who has not heard this naive statement put 
forward as the last and strongest argument of those who 
will not take alarm at the new condition of Europe? 
But it is touching rather than reasonable. It is more 
than doubtful that we need only renounce every par- 
ticipation in the affairs of Eiu^ope to be let alone within 
our frontiers, and it is against reason that our eastern 
provinces will be left us out of mere kindness just when 
we are no longer in a position to defend them. However, 
let us take it for granted that, in the time-honoured 
phrase, France will not be invaded. Is it necessary for a 
country to be invaded to vanish from the political stage, 
and become dependent upon the pleasure of others ? Has 
Portugal been invaded? Did we feel constrained to 
invade it a few years ago when we had a difficulty with 
the Portuguese Government about some trader? A 
French man-of-war simply put into the mouth of the 
Tagus, cut off the moorings of the ship we thought 
unduly detained, and steamed away with her under the 
very noses of the Portuguese guns. Are we prepared to 
take the same treatment from the new arbitrators of 
Europe, and to tolerate a repetition of the same scene 



48 The Deterioration of France 

in the mouth of the Seine? Let us confess the bitter 
truth : There is no golden mean for a nation once glorious 
between keeping up its former prestige or altogether 
losing it. There is incleed a moment of transition, but 
how very brief ! In fact, there is no point at which such a 
fall can be suspended. One has either to resist, or roll 
down to the bottom of degradation. Let us, then, 
aeeept the alternative which our past forces upon us; 
on one hand remain, at the cost of immense sacrifices, 
what our history and the intelligent perseverance of our 
ancestors made us, or, ot\ the other, hoping for the best 
and supposing that we shall be suffered undiminished 
to survive our historic existence, stay quiet in our 
modest possessions, with both mind and heart weakened 
by our resignation and on a level with our new fortunes, 
but still harping on our former glories and wearying 
Europe with the names of Louis XIV and Napoleon, 
much as the names of Philip the Second and Charles the 
Fifth, frequently invoked on the other side of the 
Pyrenees, reach indeed our ears, but leave us indifferent. 

Paradol concluded with suggesting the only remedy 
he thought possible: Cease to look upon Algeria as a 
nicre settlement, colonize it with Frenchmen, not for- 
eigners; therefore take measures to stop depopulation, 
and in time create on either side of the Mediterranean 
an empire of eighty or a hundred million Frenchmen 
which no European influence could hold in check. 

Whatever his hope of the adoption of this remedy 
might be, Paradol certainly sa\v the real situation with 
astonishing lucidity; the statement that the French 
were weakened by a double source of influence — an anti- 
Christian philosophy on one hand, and, on the other, a 
growing indifl'erence to the position of France as a 
European factor — summed up the deterioration of 



The Denouement 49 

France as clearly as if the writer had actually read 
her future history. 

13. The Denouement 

Two years after the publication of La France Nou- 
velle, the catastrophe came at last. Thoughtlessness or 
unwise thinking met its reward. The War of 1870 was 
not the first great modern war; the Revolutionary 
period had seen several times before whole nations 
represented by their youngest or bravest being hurled 
against one another, but it was the first scientific war, 
with more regard to science than to the old code of 
chivalry, and the flashlike rapidity which is a condition 
of success in modern wars. Bismarck, von Moltke, and 
von Roon had watched their opportunity with untiring 
patience, and had not lost a minute in the preparation 
of their attack. They were helped by the incredible 
folly of the French dijolomacy at first, and of the French 
military authorities afterwards. The result of genius 
and perseverance being pitted against levity and im- 
prudence was fully what ought to have been expected; 
the War of 1870 can only be adequately described by 
the French word which has almost become its synonym ; 
it was a debdcle, with at first the astonishment, then the 
misgivings, and gradually the distrust, the discourage- 
ment, and the panic which are its moral consequences. 
Meanwhile the most terrible winter was raging, and 
in Paris famine was added to all the other horrors. 
Then came the suspense and anxiety of Thiers's pil- 
grimage to all the monarchs of Europe in quest of sym- 
pathy and assistance, and the everlasting Vcb victis 
which to-day seems the proper answer to people whose 
imprudence was alone to blame, and a never- to-be- 



50 The Deterioration of France 

forgotten lesson for the future; then the wrench of the 
Frankfort treaty, and the parting with Alsace-Lorraine, 
a torluro wliicli those who feci it even ai present can 
alone realize in its cxqtiisitencss, and shortly afterwards 
the gigantic f ait-divers of the Commune, with its fires 
and massacres, and a touch of comic vulgarity over 
it all which makes it more repellent. Meanwhile the 
great historic result towards which the genius of Bis- 
marck and the blindness of the Imperial Government 
had tended became a fact. Germany, after being for 
centuries the poetic name of the Mother of Nations, 
suddenly took on a distinct significance. Where there 
had been a jumble of conflicting interests, religions, and 
mimners, with no other bond than the kmguagc, ap- 
peared a formidable politic reality which was to change 
the European conditions for a length of time which 
(^annot yet be calculated. Where there had been pleasant 
associations attached, appeared, in strong contrast with 
French culture and English civilization, a brutal power 
which the commonest bully disguised as a soldier alone 
represents adequately. Germany has given herself up 
to Prussia, and whatever she may have gained by the 
bargain she has lost in foregoing her old charm and 
in opening for herself a future over which black clouds 
already hang. 

But these losses of Germany can only appear as 
losses to fine sensibilities or to exceptionally clear- 
sighted historians, whereas the Icxss of France was a 
fact which no sclC-dclusion only cowardice — could 
lessen. In 1871, less than thirty years after Louis 
Philippe — " bourgeois " King as he was — could say that 
no cannon was shot in Europe without his permission, 
less than twenty years after Napoleon had said with- 
out any bombast that his subjects being happy Europe 



The Denouement 51 

might be at peace, France had fallen, in power, in- 
fluence, population, and moral energy, behind a rival 
whose greatness her own monarch had helped and 
practically made. 



SECTION II 

DETERIORATION OF FRANCE UNDER THE THIRD 
REPUBLIC 

The object of this section is to show how the moral and 
poHtical decadence of France which had begun under 
the Empire — thanks to the audacity of a few thinkers 
and writers and to the bHndness of the public powers — 
was continued under the Third Republic. But while in 
the preceding regime the authorities had been to blame 
only for their incapacity and had uniformly tended 
towards order, the position was reversed under the 
Third Republic: the spirit of disorder ceased to be 
embodied in philosophies and poems ; it was represented, 
expanded, and — with a few transient lulls — made worse 
by the authorities themselves, which more than once 
seem to have been actually possessed by a destructive 
genius. 

I. Is the Deterioration to be put down to the 
Republican Institutions? 

The coexistence of this accelerated falling off in moral 
standard and political influence with the republican 
institutions has induced many critics, some of them of 
excellent judgment, to say that here was another in- 
stance of the "institutions corrupting citizens," and 

52 



Is It from Republicanism ? 53 

that the Republic as a regime was responsible for the 
decadence chronologically coinciding with it. These 
critics, foremost of whom is M. Maurras, with his school, 
insist that the Republican regime is synonymous with 
instability, and often with demagogism — that is to say, 
the worst form of disorder — and that no good can come 
out of it. They point out that the democracies of 
antiquity were only prosperous so long as they were 
oligarchies — avowedly or in disguise — and were all of 
them ruined by the germ of unrule they invariably 
developed. The deplorable state of France under the 
Third Republic, they urge, is only one more illustration 
of a law which history has never yet belied. 

This academic discussion is not new, of course; the 
merits and demerits of constitutions will always pro- 
vide men with an exciting topic, while the other great 
law, of the inevitable decay of all human foundations, 
will always provide their philosophy with melancholy 
food. The monarchical system looks well on De Bonald's 
pages, and the Republican ideal is captivating in the 
volumes of De Tocqueville — this is a matter of course. 
Realities vary with times. For the present state of the 
world, all that can be said is that Democracy works 
very tolerably in the New Continent, while monarchies 
show a decided superiority in the old one. The systems 
based on authority certainly help the public spirit, but 
when the public spirit is weak, even monarchies are 
precarious. This might be repeated ad nauseam in a 
thousand formulae. 

We should be very careful to distinguish between the 
French Republic in the first four years of its existence 
and the long troubled period that followed. Under 
Thiers, and as long as the Assemblee Nationale was not 
dissolved, things were very different from what they 



54 The I)(i( I ioi'.ilion of Immiicc 

l)rt';m\(* ;i fin ward;;, and (IciMilcully more satislactoiy. 
'V\\c will of [\\c nation was all slraiiuul towjirds [\\c 
noblest ohjtx'U; viz., tlu' liluMation o\' llu> (orritory still 
<H\'upi(Hl by the (KMiiian;;, tlu> impiovrmont of the 
rmanrial sittiatioii in i\\)\[c o[' the tMioi'tnoiis war in- 
diMiiint\ dcmaiidrd by Ihsinarrk, and, above all, the 
reformat it)n kA' the afniw Unitx' o( feelini; eoiiecMiiinj^ 
sneh vital points is, of ei>nr;;(\ a. nnicjue asset ii\ the life 
oi a naticMi; bnt tluMe was something else that made for 
eoneiMit lat ion of i>lTort , and eonsei(nent ly sneeess. The 
eon;;t ittit it)n nndtM- wliieli P^anei* has lived ami lost sinee 
1S75 did tu>t t^xist it was not evcMi thoni^ht of. The 
id^M niuviMsal in tlit^ AsiUMnblw and widely spread in the 
eountry, was that tlu^ l\.i^i)nblii- was only a transitory vO- 
im^huc prai"tit'a11y a t nu"i» bet wihmi the Nh>nai-ehists who 
werc^ the lariu^ majoiity and that, as sot>n as tlu> most 
in)',ent needs ol I'^ianee had beiMi sihmi to, an affani'iMmait 
wonUl be maile In^tween tlu> l.ei;it imists, ( >iU\nhsts. and 
ImpiM-ialists, ami the Kinj; would con\c baek. 

Thus I*" ranee VwcA in expcu'tation of a tei;ime of 
luithorily. This is not saying eiunijdi; et>mpatcHl with 
the eonstihttit)ti 1 shall pn^setitly deseribe, tlu^ !'.o\efn- 
inent of Thiers was a reiM'"^' *>' authority. Tlu^ powtis 
ol Thiers ililleiinl entiiel\- from those of (hi* pix^siikaits 
wln> eame aftia- him, t\spiHMally those who were eleeted 
after iSc)S, whet\ the Ri^publie had lost whatever energy 
it had oiijMnally possesscnl. lie was nuieh miM"e a 
PremiiM" than a Presidiait, goviMiied as personally as a 
.President <>( i\\c l'niti\l Stales, and appeannl as a 
ri'sponsibk* authoiity. l*AerylH>d\' nuist see at onee 
how ditl\Mei\t this posit ii>ti was from that oi M. Poin- 
eare, ami it (aki\s the stupidity or the bad faith o{ the 
low politieian to gainsay that it was not more favour- 
able ti> the welfare o( the eountrv. 



Is It from I\C|Hiblicanisiii ? 55 

The results, it is well ki)own, were remarkable. In 
less than three years, Uu. Ocnrviw; had been paid off, y 
the Exehec^uer of France. .-Lpp< ;u(d decidedly prosper- 
ous, and the army liad been sirciij^ilicncd. 'I'hc n.-d-ion 
was on the hijdi ro.-ul to ;;]K;(rdy recovery, and her ricijdi- 
boi]rswor)de,n;fb'i,rid.'idrriired ; lii:;rriarck was doubtful and 
uiie.'i,;,y in hi:; mind; .'dloj^elher the moral effects of the 
disaslei, icec-nt tlionj^h il. wa:;, were f;i.:;t di::;i.ppearin^. 

Uri fortunately tlx.; Asseniblee Nationale w.'is divided, 
and in a short time sacrificed Thiers to its divisions; 
MacMahon, who succeeded him, did not enjoy tlu; 
sam(5 authority; b(;sides, the Assembly had to adjourn 
itself; as its members made up their minds to do -io 
before setthng the difficulties which were in the w;i,y of -a. 
Restoration, they were compelle.d to con,o]id;i.te the 
makeshift arran^^emcnt which they had thonj'ht would 
be suffjcient for a while, and they reluctantly jxissed 
the laws, the ensemble of which is j^enerally c.'illed the 
Republican Constiti:ition. These laws were m;ide by a 
jealous Ass(irnbly, on its guard against th(; ]Ve!,ide,rit, 
inevitably inclined to limit his power lest he :,lioii]*l n.e 
it against the Restoration, and, on the contrary, an /ions 
to confer :i:: niucli .'uitliority a;; po;;:;ible on tlu; l\'i.r]i,'i,- 
ment whiclj w;i.;, to come <'i,fter- it. ( )n tlie who](t, these 
Monarchists framed a constitution which is not only 
democratic but demagogic in its jjrinciijk-s. 

This was a dangerous mistake. UTit; majority in the 
Assembl6e Nationale took it for granted that their ojjin- 
ions, if not their representatives, would b(; the same in 
the Chamber of Deputies which war, to be elected. It 
never occurred to them that things might turn out 
differently, and that the; couches nouvellcs, thxi new 
strata, the existence of which Oambettn, proclaimed in 
a famous address, might give ris(; to a i'arliament as 



56 The Deterioration of France 

new in its spirit as these were in their formation. They 
did not suspect that these homines novi might have 
grown up in the hotbeds of Taine's and Renan's philo- 
sophies, and be full of undigested notions even worse 
than those of the eighteenth century ; that, consequently 
to give them a chance of securing power was to run a 
risk of delivering France up to ideology, and sooner or 
later to demagogism. 

Yet this was what happened. The Chamber which 
the first general election (in 1876) returned was not the 
successor but the resolute enemy of the Assemblee 
Nationale. Instead of the Due de Broglie, its great 
leader was Gambetta, and the effects of such a change 
were not long in being felt. While the five years which 
came after the war had seen a continuous reviving of 
the national energy, the years that immediately fol- 
lowed the election of the first Republican Chamber saw 
a turn for the worse about which clear-sighted observers 
had no uncertainty. 

We can therefore leave the years 1 871-1875 out of 
our investigation into the deterioration of France, and 
date its second period from 1876. This was not the 
worst either. In 1898 the rise of the Socialists inaugu- 
rated an era of unheard-of recklessness, which might be 
going on at the present moment, if the national danger 
in 1905 had not sobered most Frenchmen capable of 
reflection or at least of patriotism. 

I 876-1 898 

2. Imperfections and Dangers of the so-called Constitu- 
tion of 1875 

Drawn up as I have just said they were, the constitu- 
tional laws were calculated to weaken the legitimate 



Imperfections and Dangers 57 

authorities and to seat power where it has no business 
to be. This perversion was seen very early by all men 
versed in constitutional legislation, but it took time to 
bring it home to differently trained intellects. To-day, 
forty years' experience has left no doubt even in the 
crudest minds that the Constitution of 1875 is largely 
responsible for the state of disorder in which France has 
lived since its slow and unwilling preparation and by no 
means enthusiastic promulgation. Where authority is 
not, disorder is sure to appear, and the constitutional 
laws are sneakingly antagonistic to every authority. 

The President of the Republic, of course, Has no 
power; he is only the official representative of the 
country, but the word official is one which in France at 
least, has gradually taken on a meaning excluding real 
authority. In the United States of America, a President 
is directly elected by the nation, and enjoys the full 
delegation of the nation's power during the four years 
of his office. He knows it well, and if anything strikes 
even the casual observer, it is the sense that an Ameri- 
can President has of his responsibility, and the dignity 
this feeling lends to his actions and decisions. In 
France, the President is elected by the Chamber and 
Senate meeting in Congress, and this alone carries 
considerable significance. The country realizes that 
the relation between the President and itself is not 
immediate, that it has nothing to say to it, and con- 
sequently that it may as well take no interest in it. 
This, in fact, is what happens. The Presidential elec- 
tion to which France seemed the most attentive was 
undoubtedly that of M. Poincare in 191 3, and yet a 
fortnight before it took place the name of M. Poincare 
had hardly been mentioned in connection with it. The 
two preceding elections had been met by an indifference 



58 The Deterioration of lM;ince 

Mki.I. ini.rjil be coiistrucHl as almost, iiisnllinj,',; tlial of 
F6Hx Faurc was a. surpriso; only a. Iiandfiil o{ iiolilicians 
had supposinl it. was possibles vSo the clcctitm of a 
Pivsiiknil. is what the French call a. purely political — 
that, is to say, ahnost the reverse of a national — affair. 

On the t-ontrary, the relation between the President 
and tlu> Tarliament electini; him is very close. The 
PiH^sidcMit invariably lu>lonj;s to either the Sen;it.e or 
(MiainbcM-, so is int.inial.ely acHjuaintiHl, and oftiMi niixcvl 
up willi, lobb\' int 1 ijMif;;. llavinj^ been a member of 
the Asseml>lies I'oi- \ eais, it is inevitable that he should 
share tlieir point. o{ \\c\\, habits, and ctlios {generally. 
The result is that. lu> finals himself not. the country's, but 
their dc^lc\i:;ate, aiul not by any nu\ins their head. It 
is remarkable that, ah.houi?;h the C\)nstit.ution cmiiowers 
him to eommnnieate with lH>th Mouses throui;h mes- 
saj^t's, he neviM- uses the privilej^e; his situation compels 
him to ait in a semi-private manner, and in a crisis it 
is ne\iM- Iu\ but the Prime Minister, who is the centre 
i.)^ at tent ion. 

The I'residiMit can declare war, but it is after con- 
sult ins; Parliament; he sii^iis the treaties, but they have 
to be eountiM-signed b>' ihc l^'oreign Minister, who is 
tluMi- a>al aulluM-; he can dissolve the Chamber, but it is 
nt)t without the piM-mission v\' [\\c Sena.te; he chooses the 
Ministers, it is t rui\ anil this appa.rently is an element 
of elVieienev, but hisehoiiH^ in i-eality is luU free — it was 
well seen in jime, U)i4, w1um\ M. Rlbot fell; the Minis- 
ters are chosen in tlu^ Chamber or Senate, atul the 
atmosphere of tlu^ ChamluM- aiul vSei\ate at the time of 
tlu^ fall of a Cahinet. maki^s it clear to everybody what 
the new CiOveri\ment must be. 

Ari a fyostrn'ori ar_i;unuMi( shows more conclusively 
than aiwthinj; else that the authority of the President 



Imperfections and Dangers 59 

docs riol count beside that of the Chamber; only Iwicc, 
in more than forty yc^.-irs, were Presidents openly in 
(H)nnict with Pn,rli,-UTi(!nt; those; Presidents were 'Jliiers 
and MrLcMnlion tlu; only two wlioin their past ns well 
as their eh.'i,raet(;r ine1in(;(i to defend their privil(;j^es or 
policy, lioth wer(! ])rom])tly (l(;fe.'i,t(;d by their jKjweifnl 
enemy, and comiKslled not only to give in but to resign 
as well. 

If the; Ministers w(;r(; appointed for seven years, like 
the President, they would .-i.ppear much more im[)ortant 
persons than the latter. Tln-y have a will, and, to a 
certain extent, the me.-ms of carrying it out. They 
introduce bills; they even sign decrees which, in the 
abscmce of a law, have the same compulsory power. 
When Parliament hai)pens to trust them for any length 
of time, or to wink at what th(;y do, they may leav(' a 
certain trace behind them. Men like M'. 1 hmot'iux <'i.nd 
M. I)elcas^;e, n,t the Ministry of i^'oreign Affairs, lik(; M. 
Millei;i,nd ;i.iid unfortunately Gent.T.'d Andr6 Ixifore him 
at the War Office, bc^long a great d(!.al more to history 
than M. Sadi Carnot, M. IvOub(;t, or, above all, M. 
I^'.'dlicr(;s. But these are exceptions. One could hardly 
count a dozen such, among the four hundred and odd 
Ministers who hc^ld offK^e since 1875. The French. 
Cabinets an; (kqxnident upon and under the const.-mt 
supervision of the ( 'hanilxir, and, when the danger of 
the nation makes responsibilities less desirable, it is 
only for .-i. :,hort tinu^ th,'i,t Parliament leaves the burden 
it r(;fuse;; to ca.rry t,o tiu! men who have a right to take 
it on themselves. The consequence is that Cabinets are 
short-lived; that the effects of their policy seldom ap- 
jjearing clearly before they have given up office, or even 
before they have been turned out by Parhament, they 
can never be made to account for their actions; that 



6o The Deterioration of France 

the line followed by a Government is seldom adopted 
by the Government which comes after it, and that, 
as M. Clemenceau once said, with his usual bluntness in 
the Chamber, the French Republic is governed inco- 
herently. Add that the rule has almost invariably been 
that the more difficult parts, those of the Ministers of 
Foreign Affairs, War, Finance, and the Navy, are 
hardly ever entrusted to technicians, and that, in the 
words of M. Faguet, the lack of proper capacity is 
generally associated with the dread of responsibilities. 
Illustrations could be numberless. The history of the 
Ministry of Navy alone would appear as a long tale of 
expensive and dangerous inconsistency. 

Neither the President nor the Cabinet having au- 
thority, it appears evident that the real power in France 
rests with the Parliament. And let not the reader be 
deceived by preconceived ideas suggested by American 
or English associations; it is not the Speaker of the 
Chamber who is invested with any special authority. 
He is more active than the President of the Republic 
and far more respected than the Prime Minister, no 
doubt, and being appointed for a year he enjoys a sort 
of stability, but his power does not exceed the limits of 
the Parliamentary regulations; beyond the application 
of these disciplinarian rules he can do nothing. So the 
real possessor of authority is the Chamber itself — much 
more than the Senate, whose essential duty is only to 
ratify or modify the bills sent up from the other House. 

Under the Second Empire, when, after years of 
obscurity, the Chamber oi Deputies emerged once more 
into the light, one arrangement was kept up which 
limited the initiative of the Chamber in a very wise 
manner. The Bills submitted to the debates were not 
introduced by individual members ; they were proposed 



Imperfections and Dangers 6i 

and prepared outside the Assembly by the Council of 
State, a body of eighty men with exceptional legal or 
political training, who even now enjoy a consideration 
similar to that of the Supreme Court in Washington. 
The quiet work of these experts saved a great deal of 
wavering and idle speechifying in the Chamber. This 
excellent system was ignored in the constitutional laws, 
and not only any ephemeral minister, but any ignorant 
or even anarchical deputy, can introduce a bill, de- 
scribe it with lengthy complacence, and compel the 
Chamber to give it attention. The number of these 
private attempts at legislating is so great that the four 
years of the existence of a Chamber are never enough to 
attend to them, and to the usual discussion of the bud- 
get as well. Many a Bill is looked into, placed on the 
order of the day, and sometimes debated for months, 
which eventually cannot be definitely passed or thrown 
out because a new Chamber is returned before the 
deputies have had time to make up their minds about it. 
This accounts for no fewer than eight Income Tax Bills 
having been not merely laid on the table but amended 
and perfected by months and even years of sometimes 
excellent work, without any one of them ever taking 
any effect till 1914. 

So the Chamber legislates at will about the most 
difficult questions ; nothing has been more frequent in its 
history than seeing this Assembly — mostly consisting 
of lawyers — amending a knotty bill on some naval 
technicality, defended by a Minister of Navy who was 
not a naval man, but another lawyer or a physician. 
Here again incapacity is the rule, and also once more 
irresponsibility, for a Chamber consisting of six hundred 
members is at first sight eminently anonymous, but it is 
so even more than it seems ; the anonymous deputy, who 



62 The Deterioration of France 

gives his vote about a question of which he knew no- 
thing before debates often more confusing than enligh- 
tening, is not his own master; other anonymous people, 
somewhere in his far-away constituency, have also their 
opinion on the bill at issue — an opinion largely founded 
on what they conceive to be the effect of that bill on 
their own private interests — and they vote quite as 
effectually as their effaced representative. 

The Chamber which possesses all the legislating 
power has long arrogated to itself, and still is inclined to 
secure for itself whenever there is a chance of doing so 
without incurring immediate responsibilities, the execu- 
tive power as well. This, of course, belongs nominally 
to the President and his ministers; but the President 
never was known to do more than countersign the laws, 
and as to the ministers, they have under them, it is true, 
the officials who are responsible for the daily matter-of- 
fact details of the enactment of a law, but, thanks to the 
right of interpellation, they are amenable to any ques- 
tion which the most obscure member is pleased to ask 
them. They all know it, and act accordingly. M. 
Combes, who was remarkable for a frankness not to be 
mistaken for courage, avowedly professed himself the 
agent of the Chamber. The Cabinet, during the three 
years he held office, was purely a name, the heads of 
the Parliamentary groups meeting regularly the Prime 
Minister and informing him in advance of the pleasure 
of their adherents, did duty for the ministers; it was the 
only period during which the constitutional laws were 
applied not in the hypocrisy of their letter but in the 
sincerity of their spirit. Then the Chamber was ab- 
solutely the supreme ruler that the members of the 
Assemblee Nationale wanted it to be. 

The results of a preposterous combination placing 



An Element of Division 63 

the power where there is no responsibility will appear in 
the following chapters; we shall see that the intestine 
divisions of the politicians, their forgetfulness of 1870, 
their seeking a diversion in a colonial policy, and accept- 
ance of a sometimes humiliating system of alliances in 
consequence, their own moral deterioration and narrow- 
minded persecutions of Catholics they affect to regard 
as enemies, are the natural product of an absurdity 
disguised as a constitution. All the questions which 
puzzled foreigners ask so often about French politics, 
about their corruption, about the continuation of an 
action out of which no good effects ever seem to arise, 
and the only positive result of which is religious intoler- 
ance, are easily solved by the consideration of the 
uncontrolled power of the Chamber. The French Cham- 
ber can only be compared to an absolute monarch, but 
v/hereas an absolute monarch may rouse and gradually 
centre upon himself hatred enough for his overthrow, the 
Chamber being apparently an image of the country and 
in reality an unseizable Proteus, the deputies can only 
be reformed by themselves, that is to say, by the slow 
influx into them of the best public spirit. Now French 
Assemblies have been known so to feel the influence of 
the country as to sacrifice themselves, but that was at 
exceptional epochs of rare enthusiasm, say 1790, and 
coups d'etat have been of infinitely more frequent 
occurrence. 

3. The Chamber an Element of Division, not of Union 

I said above that until 1875, when the Assemblee 
Nationale dissolved itself, a patriotic spirit of reparation 
had kept the members of this Assembly united enough 
for the accomplishment of their chief object, viz., the 



64 The Deterioration of France 

healing of the wounds of 1870. Things were very differ- 
ent in the first Chamber elected under the constitutional 
laws. The deputies sent to Versailles in 1871 had been 
chosen by the country still under the impression of the 
double tragedy of the war and the Commune ; they were 
decidedly conservative, and were expected to work in a 
spirit totally different from that of Gambetta and his 
group. Five years later a great change had taken place. 
France had recovered from her shock, and instead of 
the bewilderment of defeat she felt the exhilaration of 
convalescence. She was tired of the hesitations and 
divisions of the Assemblee Nationale concerning a 
Restoration which at present did not appear as a 
necessity. She was no longer afraid of Gambetta, and 
began to be as convinced as Bismarck that his name no 
longer meant guerre d. outrance. So in 1876 she returned 
a Chamber which was in majority Republican. The 
Monarchists belonging to the preceding Assembly saw 
with amazement that the constitution they had devised 
as a shield for themselves became at once a weapon for 
the Republicans. These Republicans were as different 
from themselves as could be imagined. They no longer 
had before them an immediate and very noble object 
to attract their energies; they were much more men 
possessed of a spirit and feeling its presence powerfully 
but not distinctly. And what was this spirit? Emi- 
nently the humanitarian, philosophical, and anti-Chris- 
tian tendency which I pointed out as the spirit of the 
Second Empire. Most of these men had been young 
barristers, journalists, or medical students in Paris when 
Taine, Renan, Baudelaire, Flaubert, etc., were the 
oracles of cultivated youth, and they now reappeared 
full of that dangerous culture. Henceforward they, 
the new leaders, would govern France by the Hght 



An Element of Division 65 

of ideas which the Second Empire had tolerated as 
academic but would have abhorred if they had been 
propounded as a political beacon. And these new- 
comers might well affect the materialism of Taine, the 
cosmopolitanism and dilettantism of Renan, but they 
could not be philosophers or dilettanti like Taine or 
Renan. Their vocation being politics they were re- 
flections of these distinguished men as professional 
politicians can be, that is to say, in a coarse manner. 
Their chief satisfaction was evidently to be able to 
combat the clergy — their political enemies — in the 
name of science and philosophy. During the first five 
years of the existence of the Republican regime they 
had had serious reasons to fear lest the Republic should 
only be a monarchy without a monarch, and while the 
Assemblee Nationale was divided between its patriotic 
effort and its incurable divisions, they had fought 
throughout the country for their share of power and 
their portion of booty. 

Such men, excited by years of frustrated expectation, 
by the recent contest, and by the heat of victory, were, 
in the full force of the term, politicians as opposed to 
statesmen, that is to say, men who would inevitably 
confuse the interest of their party' and their own selfish 
ambitions with the interest of their country. In this 
mood and with this background, finding a constitution 
which made the Chamber the supreme master, it was 
impossible that they should look beyond the limits of 
party politics. In fact, from their first success in 1876 
till the great shock of the Tangier incident in 1905, the 
history of France as written by her deputies is merely 
the history of the Chamber, nay, of the majority in the 
successive chambers. With no authority to control 
them the deputies could only follow the guidance of 



66 The Deterioration of France 

their collective passions or appetites, and they did 
it. 

It is unfortunate that the first Republican manifes- 
tations looked very much like persecution, and almost 
from the first like religious persecution. It was very 
natural that the Republican party should take pre- 
cautions against a possible return of their opponents; 
it was even comprehensible that the recent conquerors 
should be on their guard against the alliance of the 
throne and the altar, but Ferry went farther than even 
Gambetta probably wanted, and made a whole category 
of citizens outlaws at once. Vive la Repuhlique! meant 
so clearly : Down with the Monarchists ! down with the 
Moderates! down with the Catholics! that even now, 
worn out as forty years have made this cry, it has still 
the hostile sound which it took then. It is a watchword 
more than a national phrase, and the Radicals of to-day 
are as ready to claim a right of proprietorship in it as 
the Opportunists of 1877. Peace, unity, reconciliation 
they look upon as personal enemies, and they have 
done so for two generations. 

Beside the satisfaction of their hatreds they would 
also have that of their appetites. Gambetta himself 
said to his friend Madame Adam that it was only just 
if after leading his soldiers to battle he should let them 
have the booty. This meant an everlasting fight for 
public employments, for well-paid sinecures, for privi- 
/ leges of all sorts, and a stern denial of their due to those 
outside the party. The history of the Third RepubHc 
can envy that of previous regimes no sort of corruption. 
The numberless changes of government occurring 
without any very marked change in the Republican 
personnel show clearly that interests have had more to 
do with them than principles or opinions. Whenever 



An Element of Division 67 

we read the list of a new Cabinet we hear people un- 
aware of political realities wonder at seeing all the 
shades in the Republican majority so well represented 
in it, but this is not owing to the penetration and pru- 
dence of the newly-made Premier, it is the result of 
very matter-of-fact negotiations between the groups, 
and the list of names can easily be converted into a 
column of figures. 

Clever as a lot of men seeking their own profit in 
everything may be, if they happen to be legislators 
instead of forming some disreputable corporation, they 
have to legislate. Now legislating is a somewhat dan- 
gerous business. As long as you can legislate against 
your enemies, and are sure of a public that will approve 
of your energetic action, it is very well. But a Parlia- 
ment cannot endlessly devise laws against some opin- 
ions or some categories of citizens. A time comes when 
positive action has to be taken, either because the 
majority has promised it, or because the minority 
threatens agitation if measures likely to be popular 
are not adopted, or merely because a whole country 
cannot admit the fiction — so dear to the French depu- 
ties — that a Parliament does enough so long as it 
governs. Being thus constrained to pass and enact 
laws, they are in danger of creating discontent among 
their friends and sometimes — wherever taxation is in- 
volved — of being prejudicial to themselves, their family, 
or their cHentele. 

This necessity has been the motive of a great deal of 
vain talk in the Chamber, and of the production of a 
certain number of laws. Some of these have been mere 
sham; for instance, all the Income Tax Bills I mentioned 
in a previous chapter, the frequent suppression on the 
eve of general elections of the sub-prefects, and the no 



68 The Deterioration of France 

less frequent passing of bills destined to put heavy 
taxation on luxuries — and consequently likely to please 
the majority of electors — but nullified by the surrepti- 
tious introduction of numberless clauses of exemption. 

Many other laws have been passionately discussed 
and carefully considered, tried, and afterwards re- 
pealed when they were found not to act satisfactorily. 
But all this wisdom was expended mostly upon mea- 
sures concerning the Chamber itself. This assembly 
never shows so much practical good sense, it is never so 
ready alternately to stand upon principles and then 
resort to combinations, as when its own existence is at 
stake. These admirably-balanced laws have concerned 
mostly the suffrage, and it is wonderful that the coun- 
try should not have been early aware that the interest 
which the Chamber evinced in electioneering matters 
was not interest in the electors but interest in the 
elected. 

Finally, the Chamber has often passed laws which 
were to give pleasure to the country at large; for in- 
stance, the many military laws, all intended to make 
the burden of the military service lighter at least to the 
multitude, and the labour laws, the laws on public 
assistance, the nationalization of railways, etc. — these 
measures were uniformly called truly democratic before 
being enacted, but the moment their effects were seen 
they had to be given their true name, which is demagog- 
ism, and either had to be repealed or to be obviated by 
other laws ad infinitum. 

Such are the drawbacks of an assembly professedly 
destined to legislate, but through a fundamental error 
empowered to govern. Nobody will gainsay the state- 
ment that since 1876, and even during the existence of 
the Assemblee Nationale, the deputies have sought 



The Revanche Given Up 69 

primarily their own advantage, and only thought of the 
country's welfare in connection with it. Of a policy 
based on the state, progress, and moves of the surround- 
ing countries, and really entitled to the name of a 
national policy, it is too clear that they have been 
ignorant. No unguided assembly ever is conscious of 
that supremely important side of politics unless the 
existence of the nation be at stake, and the common 
danger sweep away individual selfishness; even then 
it is not for a very long period; assemblies without the 
counterweight of a strong authority above them are a 
destined prey for dissensions and for the petty politics 
inseparable from dissensions. 

4. The Revanche given up 

The Republic was founded by Gambetta less than 
two months after the beginning of the War of 1870 in 
an admirable impulse of patriotic courage. Gambetta 's 
motto was guerre a outrance, and the programme of the 
new Government was to fight desperately and never 
let go one stone of our fortresses or one inch of our 
territory. It will be to the everlasting honour of 
Gambetta that the battles on the Loire were fought to 
redeem his word, and that France though defeated was 
not disgraced. After the conclusion of the peace Gam- 
betta adopted another watchword which sounded as 
noble: "Unceasingly think of the Revanche, but never 
speak of it." This speech again was dictated by un- 
alloyed patriotism. It was evident that the all-ruling 
necessity for France was to get back what was her own, 
restore by so doing her impaired prestige in Europe, 
and, from the mere sentimental point of view, heal a 
wound which could not cease to bleed so long as Stras- 



70 The Deterioration of France 

bourg, and above all Metz, were in the hands of the 
enemy. 

Gambetta's courage was so unquestionable, the sin- 
cerity of his resolve was so little open to doubt, that 
for many months Bismarck had no other thought than 
to keep him out of office. Gambetta at the head of the 
French Government in the then state of Europe, he said, 
would be like a drummer in a sick man's room. 

However, the election of 1871 returned a Conserva- 
tive majority, and Gambetta was almost as isolated 
in the Assemblee Nationale as he had been in the last 
Imperial Chamber. Henceforward he had to fight once 
more for his party, and its progress in the country, to 
make up for lack of influence in the Assembly. Time 
passed, and when, in 1876, the general election made 
the Republican leader practically the arbitrator of 
French politics, he appeared very different from what 
he had been supposed to be. "Always think of the 
Revanche, but never speak of it," was changed into, 
"Speak of it all the time, whether you think of it or 
not." In fact, from the moment when his influence in 
the Chamber became irresistible until his death in 1882, 
he never ceased to speak of Alsace-Lorraine in eloquent 
though tumultuous addresses, but he never initiated 
any action likely to bring about the return of the lost 
provinces. As to his friends, they did not seem to mind. 
In a short time Grevy succeeded MacMahon in the 
Presidency, and was it not Grevy who, only a few 
months after the end of the war, had coolly said to the 
Alsatian patriot Scheurer-Kestner, that repining was 
useless, and France must give up Alsace-Lorraine 
without any hope for the future? 

The key to this apparent contradiction is not difficult 
to find. It is a principle which nobody nowadays seems 



The Revanche Given Up 71 

ready to question, that a Monarchy is better adapted 
than a Democracy for the execution of far-reaching 
political plans with a view to territorial expansion. 
Such plans require unity of purpose, secrecy, and, above 
all, duration and perseverance. Of all these require- 
ments democracies are destitute. Even if they were 
less idealistic in their essence, less inclined to talk — • 
sometimes think — about the progress of mankind 
rather than the progress of the country they occupy, 
they would still find great difficulty in carrying out 
positive political designs. The assemblies representing 
them are too large, too unstable, too frequently in con- 
tact with the multitude, and too narrowly dependent 
upon it. Now the multitude, excepting in rare political 
circumstances when unity of feeling happens to create 
unity of purpose, is not only ignorant, but near-sighted; 
it is incapable of understanding reasoning based upon 
history, and of taking other than immediate interests 
into consideration; it is too unintelligent to be discri- 
minatingly selfish. Above all, it is timorous. The one 
praise which even the individuals in the lower classes 
professedly the most attached to the past will gen- 
erously bestow on the republican regime is, at any rate 
the Republic has one good point, it does not go to war. 
It is not surprising, therefore, that the first truly 
Republican assembly should have held decidedly paci- 
fist principles, and be satisfied with hearing its most 
eloquent orator go about repeating that immanent 
justice could not but reclaim the lost provinces from 
their captivity. The Monarchists had said everywhere 
during the canvassing previous to the election of 1876 
that the success of the Republicans would mean an 
immediate danger of war, but it was only a ruse, and 
everybody knew it. 



72 The Deterioration of France 

The Republican party seem also to have realized, 
almost from the first, the cogency of a very simple 
though possibly imaginary reasoning. A war, they 
thought, must result in a triumph or a defeat. If 
France is victorious, she will fall in love at once with 
the general to whom she owes her victory ; if she is once 
more conquered, she will take such a dislike to the 
regime, which she will regard as the cause of her mis- 
fortune, that its continuation will be impossible. 

This argument is based on wrong premises. The 
memory of Napoleon the First haunts everlastingly the 
nervous Republicans who dread the possibility of having 
to love another dictator, and prevents them from seeing 
to what extent conditions are changed. Modern 
generals have nothing in common with the young hero 
who came back from Italy with the fascination of youth 
as well as that of glory about him. They are elderly 
men and technicians. When the campaign is over they 
are generally exhausted by it, and not likely to cherish 
a Csesar's ambitions. It was Von Moltke who led the 
Germans to victory in 1870, and yet if they had been 
inclined to choose another master than the King of 
Prussia, it would have been Bismarck and not the 
soldier. Few generals will ever be more popular than 
Boulanger and Marchand who however did not really 
imperil the Republic. But these historical facts have 
no weight with easily perturbed minds, and the average 
Republican is endlessly influenced by his double con- 
sciousness of the fact that France loves peace, but 
adores soldiers. 

One other cause, and possibly the most important 
cause, of the gradual abandonment of the Revanche is 
to be found in the personal psychology of Gambetta. 
That Gambetta was a patriot cannot be doubted, that 



The Revanche Given Up 73 

his moral quality was not equal to his impulses is also a 
fact, and that he had the characteristic notion of the 
Third Republic — viz., govern not only with but for 
one's party — is another certainty. He unquestionably 
was sincere in his passionate grief at the loss of Alsace- 
Lorraine, and there is no reason to suspect that he was 
anything but sincere every time he spoke of their re- 
covery in the twelve years that followed 1870. But he 
was an epicure with an unconquerable propensity 
towards idleness and pleasure; he was partly Italian, 
and had the Italian's complexity of soul and the Ital- 
ian's gift for relieving his emotions by oratory. Five 
years' political agitation between 1870 and 1875 did not 
alter the nature of his sentiments towards Alsace- 
Lorraine, but it opened up new channels for his activity. 
His and his friends' success at the general election of 
1876 was a political success, and he found himself deep 
in politics, and the head of a mere party five years after 
being the undisputed representative of all the best 
French feeling. Perhaps he was tired of fighting, and 
wanted to reap the benefit of his victory; perhaps his 
party was too much for him — he despised its covetous- 
ness, and yet condoned and even defended it ; add that 
he was a prey to women, and spent the violence of his 
temperament in sentimental affairs. It has been con- 
tended also that he was duped by Bismarck, who ap- 
proached him through a disreputable man — Henckel 
von Donnersmarck — and an even more disreputable 
woman— La Paiva. Certainly he did not reject the 
temptation as much as he ought to have done.^ Per- 
haps he imagined that there was enough Machiavellism 
in him to make a gull even of Bismarck. Perhaps his 

' This question of the relations of Gambetta with Bismarck I have 
tried to elucidate in an article in the Quarterly Review, October, 191 1. 



74 The Deterioration of France 

conceit was flattered and his energy weakened by the 
idea that he was negotiating man to man with the 
greatest diplomatist of the age. Perhaps his old points 
of view gradually changed, and in his desire of enjoying 
his own success he became persuaded that Alsace- 
Lorraine would best be got back by peace, and that a 
commercial treaty, some exchange he thought possible 
in the future, would do what a war might fail in bringing 
about. 

Whatever the causes may have been, it is certain that 
the redemption of the Eastern provinces, which had 
been the ideal of the Republic at its birth, was gradu- 
ally dropped by the Republicans, so that it became 
practically their characteristic act. To revert openly 
and frequently to the question of Alsace-Lorraine, to 
give the annexed population renewed assurances that 
they were not forsaken, and that there were still many 
patriots on the look-out for an opportunity to redeem 
them, has been for more than thirty years a sure sign 
that one is in opposition, behind Deroulede and Barres, 
far away from the orthodox Republican schools. On 
the contrary, the milk-and-water theory that the pro- 
gress of idealism through democracies will some day 
force Germany to leave it to the annexed provinces to 
choose on which side of the Rhine their government 
ought to be, comfortably settled in most Republican 
minds, and was occasionally displayed in public without 
any protest from the responsible leaders. 

In that way the landmark towards which the efforts 
of France ought to have tended continuously after 1870, 
the beacon which was to have thrown its light upon the 
foreign politics of the French Governments and made 
them attentive to every move of the chief European 
nations, became obscured, and other infinitely less 



France's Colonial Policy 75 

noble guidances were substituted for it. A policy of 
what was called Recollection was recommended, and 
the quieting speech, point d'affaires, was the shibboleth. 
The result was that the French imagined that their love 
of peace was a condition productive of peace, and that, 
fancying they had nothing to fear from outsiders as 
long as they disclaimed warlike intentions, they lived 
among themselves as if they had been alone in the uni- 
verse and spent their native pugnacity at home. 

5. The Deterioration of France Emphasized by her 
Colonial Policy 

It is dangerous to speak of the colonial policy of 
France inaugurated by Ferry in 1881, and still at the 
present moment absorbing a great deal of her activity. 
To admire or blame it without careful discrimination 
is an injustice or a piece of levity. 

It is remarkable that the Colonial expansion of 
France, though advocated by a patriot, was encouraged 
by Bismarck. The Prussian statesman saw in it a 
diversion from the thoughts of Revanche, and hoped 
that the African ambitions of France would alienate 
Italy from her. But it is also a fact that the Protective 
legislation prevalent in Europe towards 1880, and the 
unexpected presence of German and American goods 
on markets where they had never been seen before, 
made it imperative for French commerce to seek new 
openings. The finance of France was rapidly recuperat- 
ing, the bas de laine was full, and, unless one wanted 
its millions and billions to be absorbed more and more 
by foreign and even hostile enterprise, it was urgent 
that channels should be found for them. Had not 
Prevost-Paradol suggested in a less matter-of-fact spirit 



76 The Deterioration of France 

that France should settle in Algeria and colonize it by 
other than vicarious methods? Surely he would have 
approved of plans for an Imperial development, 
and in themselves such plans were nothing but 
wise. 

It is evidently an injustice therefore to say that the 
Republicans only went to Tunis, the Tonkin, and Mada- 
gascar, later on to the Soudan, Congo, and Morocco, to 
avoid going back to Strasbourg, and to find in those new 
settlements enough lucrative positions to satisfy the 
greed of their party. Nothing prevented French diplo- 
macy from going round to Alsace by Indo-China. On 
the contrary, the French, with the encouragement of 
success on far-away shores, the revelation of military 
and administrative capacities in men who had otherwise 
languished in idleness, would probably have felt bolder 
as they became stronger, and in due time a chance 
would have offered for them to wash out of their history 
the stain which cannot stay there. But all this ought 
to have been done with the everlasting purpose of re- 
establishing the European equilibrium altered at Ver- 
sailles and Frankfort, and such an ambition required 
conditions which in fact we find have been lacking. It 
presupposed enough moralizing of the country to bring 
about repopulation instead of increasing the rate of 
depopulation, and this could only be done by a careful 
school and reHgious legislation along with encouraging 
economic measures. It also presupposed the anticipa- 
tion of conflicts on far-away shores as well as in Europe, 
instead of the apathetic certainty that colonizing was 
the surest method to avoid frictions. Nothing could be 
accomplished without a diplomacy, an army, and, to 
begin with, a navy of the first rank; and, in order to use 
these instruments properly, a great deal of the deter- 



France's Colonial Policy 77 

mination, unity, and self-sacrifice which caused the 
success of the Japanese in 1905 was necessary. Such a 
combination, the critics of the Republic insist, is im- 
possible in a Democracy, but is almost easy under a 
Monarch. Have we not seen the German Emperor 
create in a few years a navy second only to one in the 
world? Is it not a fact, on the contrary, that the power- 
ful navy of the United States may be rendered useless 
by a President whose ideology should hamper the more 
virile impulses of commerce? 

Whatever may be the rights and wrongs of Demo- 
cracy in other countries, it is certain that the Republi- 
can Parliaments, unsupported by the public spirit and 
poorly guided by merely nominal Governments, were 
unequal to the task set for them. Exclusively attentive 
to their divisions — to what Jules Ferry contemptuously 
called their pot au feu — they let well-meaning but in- 
competent Ministers send the French Navy to rack and 
ruin. So while they accepted a Colonial pohcy leading 
evidently to a Colonial Empire, they suffered the only 
instrument likely to make a Colonial Empire of any 
use, to be broken in their own hands. 

Besides, it was childish to imagine that a policy of 
recollection and non-interference could be maintained 
while a Colonial policy was being carried on. The 
danger of war became immediate the moment the ambi- 
tions of France were openly declared; and as France 
could not run the risk of a war alone against any of her 
more powerful neighbours, she was compelled to seek 
or accept alliances. Now, entering upon any system of 
alliances amounted to giving up the attitude of non- 
interference adopted since the establishment of the 
Republic, and being ready to follow a line entirely at 
variance with the democratic principles. 



78 The Deterioration of France 

6, Imperjcctions of the System of A lliances 

Alliances may be the results of international sym- 
pathies, but when they are nothing e'se they are 
dangerous. Certainly the sympathies of Napoleon the 
Third for Italy, which were of an eminently sentimental 
order, were of Httle use to France. Agreements ought 
to be concluded with great precautions and watched 
with even greater attention. The moment they create 
a condition of confiding apathy in a nation, they are 
not only a sign but even an element of decadence. Now 
it is ditlicult for democracies to derive from an alliance 
the advantages which it is in its nature to procure, and 
for the French Republic, as the constitutional laws of 
1875 make it, it is almost impossible. The representa- 
tive body being the image of the multitude can hardly 
face the possibility of a war with sufficient determina- 
tion, and, on the other hand, the Foreign Minister, 
being under the perpetual supervision of the representa- 
tives, cannot act with proper secrecy unless he does so 
by unconstitutional methods. This is not all; the 
Foreign ISIinister is as apt to be displaced and replaced 
as his less important colleagues, and the danger of a 
lack of continuity is constant. 

All these difficulties were only too plentifully illus- 
trated by the diplomatic history of France until quite 
recent years. Its two cliiof moments are characterized 
by the names of I\L Hanotaux and M. Delcass6, who 
followed different methods, but came to alarmingly 
similar results. 

It is an unfortunate fact connected with the 
tenure of office by M. Hanotaux, that the official 
promulgation of the alliance with Russia practically 
coincided with the most unpleasant pacifist demon- 



Imperfections of Alliances 79 

stration that France had to witness after the Third 
RepubHc. The alHance dates from June 10, 1895, and 
just a week later, on June i8th, the French fleet was 
represented at the inauguration of the Kiel canal, 
largely built with the money paid over by France 
to Germany after 1870. M. Hanotaux was a disciple 
and an admirer of Gambetta, and it would seem as if 
the action of the younger man proved that his prede- 
cessor actually wanted a reconciliation with Prussia, 
although he did not wish for an agreement with Russia. 
At any rate, people generally construed an official step 
of such solemnity in the light of a recognition of the 
Frankfort Treaty and a final abandonment of Alsace- 
Lorraine. This was hard indeed, but nothing is ever 
really final in pohtical history. What one century 
does another will undo, and no Frenchman — not even 
among the Socialists — doubts that some day, in spite 
of all the pacifist theories or diplomatic blank lies, 
Alsace-Lorraine will come back to its former possessors. 
So, one could take refuge against the present reality in 
hopes for the future, and especially in the hope of 
promptly seeing the Colonial Empire of France founded 
and prosperous. 

Viewed otherwise than sentimentally, the plan con- 
ceived by M. Hanotaux could not be denied greatness. 
It was a bold and effective design to draw a line 
of French influence across the whole width of Africa, 
and the idea served by such a man as Marchand will be 
remembered in history as of epic daring. But M. 
Hanotaux, who had had to keep from French opinion 
that the Russian alliance involved some sort of veiled 
entente with Germany, had also had to keep from it — 
and consequently keep from the Chamber — that Mar- 
chand's march was not a mere explorer's expedition, 



8o The Deterioration of France 

but had a military and diplomatic character as well. 
When the Fashoda incident became known, there was 
a universal surprise and some nervousness, but the fear 
of a war lasted only a few days. How could M. Hano- 
taux defend his point of view when his colleague of 
the nav}'' had no vessels to support his arguments? 
The consequence of the first effort of France to get 
out of her isolation, therefore, was to show to the 
world that she could still conceive the designs of a 
nation of the first rank, but, owing to the subservience 
of her governments to opinion, she had only the 
strength of a nation of the second rank to carry them out. 

Exactly similar was the experience of M. Hanotaux's 
successor, M. Delcasse. 

Of course it was a new departure. M. Delcass6 
had none of the intellectual admiration of M. Hanotaux 
for the culture of Germany, and his patriotism had its 
roots deeper in popular ground. He had no notion of 
the possibility of intimidating or coaxing Germany in 
the far-away future into giving back or exchanging 
Alsace-Lorraine against some settlement overseas. 
His secret hope was to insulate Germany from the rest 
of Europe by a chain of apparently peaceful agree- 
ments, and when the time came to make her feel 
that, strong as she thought herself, she could not resist 
the justice of France's claims supported by a tremend- 
ous coalition. Here again, there is the beauty of a 
patriotic and coherent conception. Perhaps its author 
forgot that the parties to the agreements he signed 
were more attentive to their own ambitions than to the 
prospects he himself cherished, but the very simplicity 
of such an idea was a force in itself, and its gradual 
accomplishment created in Europe an atmosphere of 
respect for France which was another element of success. 



Imperfections of Alliances 8i 

It is therefore no unforgivable vice in M. Delcasse's 
plan that it contradicted flatly that of M. Hanotaux, 
for the diplomacy of every country offers similar pieces 
of discontinuity. But the error of M. Delcasse, like 
that of M. Hanotaux, was to prepare war without 
preparing for war or without giving due notice to the 
responsible persons that they had to prepare for war. 
We shall see by and by that the seven years of M. 
Delcasse's office (1898- 1905) coincided with the Drey- 
fusist agitation and with the Government of M. Combes 
and of the Radicals of the narrowest observation — • 
that is to say, the period in French history during 
which mere words were treated the most respectfully, 
and views were sufficient food for the minds of politi- 
cians. War appeared as a barbarous impossibility, 
and the chief preoccupation of the Ministers of War 
and Marine was to civilize the army and navy, turn 
ships and barracks into institutions for the civic per- 
fecting of young Frenchmen, and, in short, prepare the 
world for universal peace. The policy of M. Delcasse 
was presented all the time as the surest guarantee of 
peace, and he alone knew that its inevitable issue must 
be the professedly impossible conflagration. The un- 
bounded surprise which took place in 1905 was the 
result, and although it will always be regarded as the 
most fortunate awakening for France, it was accom- 
panied with such a humiliation of the Foreign Minister 
as all good Frenchmen, whether his friends or his foes, 
felt with him. His own disappointment was more 
than bitter. One of his friends concluded that France 
was doomed, and wrote a book the title of which alone 
was an avowal of despair.' All that ought to have 
been concluded was that no foreign policy is possible 

'^La France qui Meurt, by A. Ebray, 1910. 
6 



82 The Deterioration of France 

to a country whose constitution vests authority in an 
Assembly and not in Government, and makes it impera- 
tive for the Foreign Minister either to be a nonentity 
or to conceal his action from the politicians who some 
day will be his judges and the arbitrators of his fate. 
To conclude, the policy of alliances, as it was carried 
on during the greatest portion of the existence of the 
Third Republic, practically until the military revival 
of the country, was in contradiction with the nature 
of the French Democracy, and yet had all the appear- 
ances of being perfectly at one with it. It secretly 
meant war, but superficially it was — and loudly pro- 
fessed to be — the safeguard of peace. Who could attack 
France when the millions of the Russian army or the 
powerful fleets of England were ready for her defence? 
The real reading of the situation ought, of course, to 
have been: We are involved in the interests and conse- 
quently the vicissitudes of other nations, therefore we 
must be day and night on the look-out and prepared 
against every surprise. But this attitude, and politi- 
cians know it, would promptly bring about a state of 
affairs practically nullifying the constitution which 
makes them supreme. Instinctively and luiconsci- 
ously a country feeling the vicinity of danger will not 
leave its security to the pleasure of a divided and 
irresponsible collectivity — it is sure to seek better 
watchmen and braver defenders. So the selfishness 
and levity of Parliament, as well as the impossible 
position of French Foreign Ministers, combine to keep 
the truth from the nation. And what is the result? 
That the alliances, instead of acting as a tonic, act 
as an opiate, turning the public feeling and the public 
mind from all-important realities, weakening their sense 
of responsibility, and centring the national pride upon 



Politicians of Third Republic 83 

that morbid joy of having been great once by power and 
of being great yet by culture and art, which is a well- 
known sign of the decadence of nations. 

7. The Deterioration of France Exemplified in the 
Politicians of the Third Republic 

Compared with their opponents in the Imperial 
Assemblies, the handful of Republicans — Gambetta, 
Jules Simon, Jules Favre — were the glorious minority. 
They had talent and courage, and they represented the 
future — the beautiful future which the popular mind 
pictured to itself under such glowing colours. Nobody 
doubted that an Assembly of such men would be far 
superior morally to any Parliament elected through 
official influence under the Second Empire. 

During the war the same men stood for heroism — 
mad heroism it is true, but none the less sublime. The 
violence of their resolution scared the demoralized 
country, and the dread it inspired caused the success of 
the Monarchists in the election of 1871. When, in 
1876, and especially in 1878, they became the majority, 
and their influence could hardly be challenged, things 
changed. There were two great ideas to defend: 
the necessity of the recovery of Alsace-Lorraine and 
liberty of conscience. Both seemed essentially Republi- 
can ideas; religious freedom and the integrity of the 
territory being dogmas with the democratic theorist. 
But the moral falling off of Gambetta which I men- 
tioned above was only one case in a thousand, and the 
politicians who succeeded one another in the Repub- 
lican Parliaments felt at once that liberty of conscience 
was a political danger and that the vindication of the 
patriotic claims on the Eastern provinces would cause a 



V 



84 The Deterioration of France 

timorousness in the minds of the electors by which they 
could only be losers. In consequence they gave up 
these two noble causes to the opposition. 

What was left to them to give an appearance of 
superiority to their side? They have repeated it so 
often that we ought to know. They plumed themselves 
everlastingly on giving France three great blessings — 
viz., civic freedom, international peace, and schools for 
the poor. But are these essentially Republican con- 
quests? By no means; they exist in Belgium, in Italy, 
in Scandinavia, even largely in Germany, to say nothing 
of course of England. Besides, it must be confessed 
that civic freedom represented by the suffrage is more 
the shadow than the thing, that peace at the cost of 
dignity is a perpetual danger of war, because — as the 
German proverb says — "him who makes himself a sheep 
the wolf will eat," and as to schools it is a melancholy 
fact that after forty years about six in a hundred 
French soldiers are illiterate, and the schools, instead 
of being instruments of civilization, have been turned 
into weapons of unbelief. From the first, the true 
Republicans in the French Parliaments have been not 
the champions of peace, but the panegyrists of ease; 
and this opened a gulf between what they were sup- 
posed to be and what they really were, between their 
ancestors of 1792 — bred on antiquity and rising quickly 
though tumultuously to the sublime — and themselves, 
even between the generous utopianism of their 
predecessors of 1848 and their own coddling 
wisdom. 

Not that the Republican bourgeois who sit in the 
Chamber are cowards. M, de Mun, who has no special 
reason for flattering them, has admirably narrated* a 

* Le Gaulois, September 21, 1905. 



Politicians of Third Republic 85 

memorable sitting of the Chamber in which one could 
see what they are capable of at a pinch, when the 
French spirit in them is roused. 

It was in February 1887, when M. Ren^ Goblet was 
Premier and Boulanger Minister of War. The Schnoebele 
incident had recently taken place, and the language of 
Bismarck was becoming day after day more irritating. In 
the meantime the national factories were at work on the 
Lebel gun. In the afternoon of the 8th the Premier un- 
expectedly demanded a supplementary fund for the speedy 
completion of the work. Everybody realized immediately 
that the situation must be serious; the sitting was sus- 
pended, and the deputies, of whatever political opinion, 
pressed round the Prime Minister. Yes, M. Goblet said, 
the situation was serious. The deputies were called back 
into the House. In a moment all the seats were full. The 
public tribunes were overcrowded, and the diplomats' 
special tribune was full of ambassadors; the deep silence 
oppressed everybody and the universal emotion was visible. 
The Speaker, M. Floquet, stood up, holding in his hands, 
which slightly trembled, the bill under consideration. His 
voice sounded through the room as he read the first chapter. 
When it was over, the Speaker put the usual question: 
Has anybody anything to say? but the silence remained 
unbroken. Then he spoke the other usual sentence: Let 
those who wish to support the motion raise their hands. 
Immediately five hundred arms were thrown up at once, 
and I can remember Bishop Freppel, who sat next me, 
making the same gesture with a rapidity recalling the 
soldier's promptitude and with the fire of Revanche in 
his eyes. Chapter after chapter was thus passed through, 
the banal gesture at the end of each one being repeated as a 
sacred rite. It seemed as i: the soul of France had taken 
possession of these hundreds of men. The people in the 
tribunes were breathless with emotion, the ambassadors 
looked on serious and surprised. The moment the last 



86 The Deterioration of France 

division was over, the House became once more empty in 
a twinkling. 

If a French Assembly even of inferior political quality 
should ever become incapable of an act of courage like 
this, France would not be France any more, and I should 
not be writing this book. But courage of the exalted 
order is not in daily demand in a Parliament, and the 
inferiority of the politicians of the Third Republic has 
had more occasions than their fortitude to attract 
attention. This inferiority is caused, partly, as I have 
said above, by the excessive dependence of the repre- 
sentative upon his constituents and the consequent 
habit of seeing their interests and considering their 
wishes before the interests and wishes of the country; 
also by the lack of political guidance for which the 
Constitution is responsible. But even with a better 
mode of election and a better Constitution, the politi- 
cians of the Third Republic would have suffered from 
an original fault which nothing can compensate — that 
is, the notion that politics is a trade like any other, 
with its risks, its difficulties, its expenses, and con- 
sequently the blemishes attached to all modem pro- 
fessions. The politician is of very much the same 
kind as the financier with whom he is in daily inter- 
course; his moral standard is limited by professional 
necessities. 

In his constituency the deputy who labels himself 
truly Republican and denies the ticket to men outside 
his party is seldom esteemed. He need not, like a mem- 
ber of the English Parliament, see his constituents very 
frequently — in fact he is often satisfied, when he has the 
Prefect on his side, with visiting them every four years, 
just before the election, or possibly at some celebration 



Politicians of Third Republic 87 

— but he is in frequent relation with half a dozen men 
from each parish who are not by any means the pick of 
the population. When people outside this charmed 
circle happen to speak of it, it is seldom without a wink 
or a shrug. In short, the deputy is not respected, and 
when the Prefect comes round for the conseil de revision 
of the recruits, or some important magistrate is sent 
down by the Cour d'Appel, the effect produced by their 
presence is very different. The deputies of the Second 
Empire, "creatures of the power" as they were, made 
an incomparably better impression. Certainly they 
were delighted to be on good terms with the Emperor's 
Government, and it was somewhat to be regretted that 
the "white poster" — the sign of official recommenda- 
tion — made their election almost compulsory, but they 
were gentlemen'' who did not care for the material 
advantages which might accrue to them from being at 
the Palais-Bourbon, and if they made interest in Paris 
for some local improvement it was not out of base 
motives. No French Assembly, since the clamorous 
Sans-culottes, has been in its general appearance so near 
vulgarity as the Chambers of Deputies elected after 
1875. The demagogism of 1848 was elegant in com- 
parison; its utopianism was pure, and the presence of 
Lamartine, Louis Blanc, and even Armand Marrast 
lent it gentlemanliness. One understands the feeling of 
Mrs. Craven — she was born La Ferronnays — who, when 
she occasionally came back to her native country after 
1878, used to say that France in her new state appeared 
to her as a lady of noble rank who had married her 
footman. 

It is useless to recall in great detail facts proving that 

'Half the members of the Chamber and nearly two thirds in the 
Senate were titled men, and there were very few professional politicians. 



HH I lie I )( ttl iol.il K >ii ( >l I ' I .iiu (• 

[\\i' profeSHIOiiiil |M»li( iriiiii i;; not ;ui ti|>iil(»ii;i; llic ;;i;ini|iil 
(•(iiiinili'il Willi llic II. line dl Wilson tho son in l.iw ol" 
I'li'siiUuiLCliovy Lliti ruiiiinia alTiiii', llic linantinl opcni- 
tions known as Ihr 'I'inml uml Konvin convfisionH, are 
classic instances uliuh are enoui'ji lo w.m.inl, every 
suspicion wlun one hears of minor or less iniblic olTences; 
I shall h)i.vc ail occar.ion to ;;av later thai \hc crafty 
manner ratlier than Iiu- I.hI itscll in wliieli the 
il.'piil ic;, \<»lril l(M I licni;.el\'e;; a I i,i lldsoilif old age 

pension a nitv.t niysLcrious tranriaction and raised 
their salaiN' l>\' l\V(t lliiids, greatly diminished even the 
poor I'oiisidfi.ihoii I lu'\' had enjo\'<'d so lar. 

If tlu^ riiiid Ivopubhc has prodiucd hni lew men of 
p.real. eivie \'n■|ll(^ it has not produced many who were 
remarkahle either l"«>r their el(U|iiencc or their polilicul 
» Mp.iiil It-;. A coinpai i;.oii ol (lie IscpiiMican orators 
since Ciaml)cl>ta, with tliose ol the Kestoration and of 
Ihe reicn of l.onis Philipi>e, would he eiusliin}.;ly ii» 
l"a\<»iirol llic l.illci;il i;. a sij'.n ol the I line;; t hat. Janii'S 
should JKive acquired the reputation he enjoys, mostly, 
it IS tiue, amon).; thost^ wlio tu^xer heard him. Tlu^'c 
was a yvcni deal more of llu^ i-ynihal than of tlu'i clarion 
in linn. 

Statesmanshij) is even more si^arce than cUxinence. 
In the;'.e davr., wlien international polities are so im- 
portant that thc\' should he a coiis.tant ;;nl>icct of 
nicditaluMi lor line paliiol;;, we i\o Imd a lew deputies 
who can hold hMlh pl.insibly cnouj^h about these in- 
trieatti (lucstions thcie are won those who have built 
h>r tlu'inselves a sort of system, ami stiik to it without 
too much inconsistency; luit where is the voii'c which 
at inttM'vals. oujdd to rtMnind tht> FrtMiehof tlieir national 
i\[i[\ Willi iMioiir.h Know ledi'.e ot I Iw Mtnation kA Mniope 
and cnonrh ant hoi it \ to ;;ilcnci> men' babblers and 



J'olil.icinn': of Tliinl R'-public 89 

make the country feel united in one great patriotic im- 
puliie? Where is the French Cavour?— certainly neither 
M. de Freycinel, nor M. Hanotaux, nor even M. Del- 
cass<§ can hope to have statues erected to their mjemory. 

A general tinge of banality has been attached to 
all that the Republic has produced until quite recent 
years. The roll of its Premiers, when one reads it over 
from the first days, sounds like a list of incarnations 
of mediocrity. Even the Presidents are painful to 
remember. Certainly the first, Thiers, was a great 
Frenchman, and the last, M. Poincar6, once gave hopes 
of being one ; but all the rest, excepting MacMahon, who 
had a brilliant past and was the soul of honesty, were 
ordinary men, chosen for their very lack of individual- 
ity. Placed beside the American Presidents, they cut a 
sorry figure, and yet the United States does not devote 
its best men to politics. It is melancholy to refiect that 
if the celebrities of the army, or of the bar, or of lit- 
erature, and even of journalism were compared with 
those of the successive Republican Parliaments, the 
comparison would be more than disadvantageous for 
politicians. 

This is, as often happens, both the result and the 
continuing cause of an absurd paradox. It would seem 
that the Chamber, being the chief and practically the 
only governing influence in France, the best men in the 
country ought to convene there. But it being pre- 
posterous nonsense that a legislating Assembly should 
have power to the exclusion of the real Governmient, 
the best men either will not seek this Assembly, or are 
eliminated from it, or become deteriorated in it. At 
all events the history of France in the Last forty years 
has been that of the deterioration of deputies as much 
as that of deterioration by deputies, and the lack of any 



90 The Deterioration of France 

real merit in the rulers of the country has been a 
powerful element of demoralization. 

8. Anti-Clericalism the only Continuous Policy 

The first great battle that the Republic fought was 
against MacMahon and the Monarchists, and it was 
promptly won; after the election of 1878 there was little 
question in the country of any strong anti-constitutional 
opposition; the Monarchists were as divided as ever, 
and when the death of the Comte de Chambord perforce 
united them, there was still the division between the 
Orleanists and Imperialists. The second battle was 
against what was called Clericalism — that is to say, the 
interference of the clergy in the politics of the country. 
The clergy, it is true, had been Republican in 1848, and 
the difficulties which the Emperor had had with the 
Pope owing to the Italian question had not contributed 
to make the bishops and their priests Imperialists. So 
the tendency of the clergy would have been towards a 
Republic if the word had had the same meaning that it 
had when Lamartine used it. But with different people 
the word had taken another signification, and the old 
alliance of the Throne and the Altar was revived. 

It was natural therefore that the Republicans, 
whether unbelievers or the reverse, should look askance 
at any possibility of the clergy inspiring the politics 
of their flocks, and there were reasons for fearing lest 
they should, for the clergy, though not Imperialists, 
had been favoured by the Empire, and their political 
influence had in many places been considerable. The 
famous speech of Gambetta, "Clericalism is the true 
enemy," ought therefore to be replaced in its environ- 
ment, and only a political meaning put upon it. Gam- 



Anti-Clericalism the Only Policy 91 

betta was no believer, but he was no antagonist to 
Christianity either, and it is ignorance of history alone 
that will quote his oft-repeated words in the same 
breath as Voltaire's no less famous ecrasons Vinjdme. 
His true meaning appeared clearly in another watch- 
word: "Anti-clericalism is good at home, but it would 
not do to export it." Gambetta fully realized that 
French influence overseas was indistinguishable from 
Catholic propagandism, and would have been more 
than satisfied if he had seen the clergy keep away 
from politics as they did under Leo XIII. 

Were the men in Gambetta's immediate entourage 
in the same state of mind? Unfortunately not. Ranc, 
Brisson, Clemenceau, Paul Bert, even Ferry, even a 
highly-cultivated man like Challemel-Lacour, were 
opposed to clerical influence, not merely for political 
but for philosophical reasons as well. They were full of 
the spirit of the Empire, but they had all of them been 
educated by men who had preserved the Voltairian 
tradition of 1840, and their admiration for Renan was, 
as I said above, admiration for the personal enemy of 
Christ, and not at all for the elegant dilettante we now 
take him to have been. So the effort made to keep the 
political influence of the Church within bounds soon 
became transformed into antagonism against the 
Church herself. Less than two years after the un- 
doubted triumph of the Republican party, the Jesuits 
had been turned out of their schools and made outlaws. 
It cannot be questioned either that the law permitting 
divorce was passed, less from social or sentimental 
considerations, as in America, for instance, than be- 
cause its promulgation would be construed by the 
popular mind as a startling defeat of the Church. At 
the same time an agitation was begun against the 



92 The Deterioration of France 

influence of the Pope in a country not his own, through 
a clergy only national in appearance, and the arguments 
which were to bring about the separation of Church and 
State began to be circulated by the Radical press. 

Yet this was only a beginning. It soon appeared that 
a great anti-clerical influence, which about 1880 ac- 
quired a power it had never possessed before, wanted 
more decisive steps. It has taken years to convince 
people who fear to be victims to exaggeration, especially 
in England, that the influence of the French Freemasons 
had any effect upon the politics of their country, and 
that it was of a decidedly anti-Christian nature. To-day 
one meets with less incredulity. Official documents 
have proved to evidence that Freemasons are and have 
throughout the history of the Third Republic been 
numerous in the Chamber and Senate, that they in- 
variably vote solid, and that if any of them presume 
to dissent from the rest they are excommunicated, as 
M. Millerand was in 1904 ; it is also evident from matter- 
of-fact comparisons of the resolutions passed in the 
yearly Masonic Conventions with contemporary Par- 
liamentary proceedings that the legislation of France 
has often been prepared in the Lodges. The essentially 
anti-religious character of the Masonic influence appears 
no less clearly from the perusal of Masonic official 
publications, and above all of the most recent Masonic 
Ritual. Until 1876 the name of the Grand Architect 
appeared in the French edition of that book as it did 
in the versions printed in other languages. After that 
date this name disappeared from the Ritual, and the fact 
was so obviously meant as an open declaration of athe- 
ism that the EngHsh and Scottish Lodges shortly after 
gave injunctions to their members to keep away from 
the French Lodges when they came to the Continent. 



Anti-Clericalism the Only Policy 93 

In this spirit, then, and with this exceptional Power, 
has Masonic influence been exercised in France until 
scandalous revelations concerned with the espionage of 
officers by Freemasons made it less effective, or at all 
events less brazen. 

The chief effort of the Freemasons and their friends 
was turned at first against the teaching of religion in 
schools. Napoleon the First and Napoleon the Third 
had entrusted a great many State-supported schools 
to the Christian Brothers and to various orders of 
women. These schools were not uniformly effective; 
as a rule, the Christian Brothers were excellent teachers, 
the nuns less so. Yet the improvement among them 
was constant, and when a law was passed making the 
usual degree as imperative for them as for the other 
teachers, there was no reason why they should be 
inferior to anybody else. But the objection against 
them was not based on lack of professional efficiency 
but on the spirit which their costume seemed to repre- 
sent. A bill was passed in 1880 secularizing, as it was 
called, all the Government schools, and determining 
what the teaching of religion in them ought to be. 
Ferry, the principal initiator of this measure, was not an 
atheist; in fact his religious views did not differ very 
much from those of Jules Simon, and the other disciples 
of Cousin. The mention of God, the soul, and morals 
was not forbidden in the schools, the children were to be 
taught their ethical duties, but all this was carefully 
regulated. The teaching of the master, though in 
ninety-nine cases in a hundred destined exclusively for 
Catholic children, must exclude all that could give 
offence to other denominations, or even to mere Theists 
opposed to any revealed creed. This was called the 
Neutrality of the school. 



94 The Deterioration of France 

It was evident that in a country overwhelmingly 
Catholic in numbers this legislation would inevitably 
bear the appearance of what it was indeed secretly 
meant to be, and that it would promptly become in its 
spirit a legal warfare against Catholic beliefs. Every- 
thing depended upon the school teacher, and it promptly 
turned out that the school teacher who kept furthest 
away from the interpretation of the Church in his 
presentment of Theism was regarded by his supe- 
riors as nearest the ideal of neutrality, and rewarded 
accordingly. 

But the passage of Catholicism to Theism in French- 
men not exceptionally well educated, and in the years 
immediately following the success of Taine as a de- 
molisher of Cousin and of the very Theism recom- 
mended by Ferry, could not result very frequently in 
the creation of a state of mind similar to Rousseau's or 
of a sincere — if extremely sober — Swiss piety. Such an 
attitude is almost impossible in Latin countries in which 
rationalistic belief only exists as the refinement of a 
highly educated elite, nor would it have been greatly 
favoured by the enemies of the Grand Architect; so 
in many places, mere Theism soon became the religion 
of Science, with the identification of God with the 
category of Ideal, Progress, and Evolution, and above 
all, the most perfunctory manner of teaching the official 
chapter dedicated to Spiritualism. A few facts have 
shown how Ferry's Theism was understood both by the 
teaching body and by politicians. The time-honoured 
example in Lhomond's Latin Grammar, Deus est Sane- 
tus, was dismissed from improved editions as dangerous 
for neutrality. One school edition of La Fontaine re- 
placed "Petit poisson deviendra grand si Dieu lui prete 
vie" by "Si Ton lui prete vie." M. Fouillee, the well- 



Anti-Clericalism the Only Policy 95 

known philosopher, had the very unphilosophic weak- 
ness to alter a passage in his wife's popular Tour de 
France par Deux Enfants, so as to leave out a visit 
of the two young travellers to Notre Dame de Paris. 
Finally M. Combes, at the time of his greatest popu- 
larity as an anti-Catholic Premier, was hooted down 
by his majority for saying that he was a Spiritualist, 
and had to come a few days later and make amends 
for his imprudence by explaining his statement in a 
manner which explained it away. 

This historical scene belongs, it is true, to the Drey- 
fusist period of the Third Republic, to which I shall 
only advert by and by, but it throws its light on the 
preceding years, and leaves no doubt that when the 
Republican majority passed the Ferry Bill in 1880, it 
regarded it only as a first step towards more radical 
suppressions. 

The campaign against religious teaching is only one 
phase of the endless war waged against the Church by 
the Third Republic; and if I wished to give even in 
outline a more complete sketch of its history, I shotild 
have to review the Parliamentary history of France 
almost month by month — any random reference to the 
Journal Officiel will prove this — but the effort of the 
Republicans in the first bloom of their success to de- 
christianize France through the schools shows not only 
the spirit of their leaders, but also their policy. This 
has consisted, and still consists at the present day, in 
proposing the philosophical campaign against religion 
in all its forms — even the vaguest — as a continuation 
of the great contest of the years 1871-1878 against the 
Monarchist clergy. 

Such a policy has had a double advantage. It has 
often blinded uncritical people to the really anti- 



96 The Deterioration of France 

Christian character of measures presented as the legiti- 
mate resistance of the lay against the religious society 
• — the measures against the religious orders liave had 
universally this character — and when, at various epochs, 
the Republican unity has seemed to be threatened, 
it has liel^jcd to bring together the disjoined parts of 
the majority. The "black spectre" pointed out now by 
Combes, now by ]3ourgeois, had often frightened 
deputies or electors into their duty, which is to support 
the Government. This attitude is sometimes sincere — 
and then it is rather stupid — sometimes put on, and 
then it borders on hypocrisy, but even in the most 
resolutely Protestant countries the terror of Rome 
could not be more powerful in its immediate effects. 
The confusion of anti-clericalism with anti-Catholicism 
or atUi-Christianity has been so easy to produce, and is 
so ineradicable, that even now, after forty-four years, 
after the elTort made by Leo XIII to win the Catholics 
to Republican loyalty, after the success of such a truly 
Republican movement as the Sill on, the word Repub- 
lican in the mouths of Radicals means nothing else 
than a man more or less opposed to the Church. "The 
whole religious question lies between us as a gulf," said 
a l^rimc Minister to M, Cochin. Wlio was this Prime 
Minister? M. Poincare himself, moderate though he be. 
And when did he say this? In 19 12, .<^even years after 
the fall of Combes and the apparent cessation of the 
most abject compression of religious liberty. There 
are reasons to suspect that this statement was only a 
political stratagem, but it does not make it less amazing 
that the stratagem should have any efTect. 

The chief work of the Third Republic therefore has 
been the destruction of the influence of the Church in 
France, not only as a society but as the vehicle of an 



The Public Spirit 97 

ethical doctrine, and the corresponding establishment 
— by politicians construing Renan like village school- 
masters — of a secular society based on unbelief. This, 
of course, was dangerous, because the effects of unbelief 
on societies have never been known to be less pernicious 
than those of fanaticism; but it was dangerous from 
another point of view. It created in a country which 
had the incredible luck not to be divided by various 
religious creeds a state of division as bitter as may have 
existed in Germany or England in the worst post- 
reformation times. As usual this fever of controversy 
and persecution had for its immediate consequence 
the blinding of those whom it possessed to any other 
object. For the questions: What are the Germans 
doing in Asia? What are the Italians planning in the 
Holy Land? was substituted the haunting problem: 
How can the Republic get rid of the Church, of her 
creed, and of her influence? 

Needless to say how this one-sided attention helped 
the deterioration of the country. Anti-Christianity, 
limited as it was under the Empire to a few Parisian 
circles, would only have lasted as long as the belief 
in Science ; poured into broad popular currents, it poi- 
soned the reserves of national life. No greater folly 
could well be conceived than that of a Government 
not only witnessing but procuring this state of dis- 
sociation, and proclaiming itself highly patriotic at the 
same time. 

9. The Public Spirit. Illusions and Vulgarity 

If religion were still a great factor in the life of 
France, or if it were practised by the majority instead 
of by a decidedly small minority, the unification of the 



98 The Deterioration of France 

Republicans through an anti-rehgious pohcy would have 
been impossible. As it was, the French Catholics, too 
few or too weak, and hampered besides by the Con- 
cordat, which gradually became an unbreakable bond, 
did not show fight, and, instead of a religious war, 
France only saw a religious persecution. This persecu- 
tion might have been violent. It hardly ever was. 
Those who carried it on realized that when the clergy 
had been so harassed that nobody could believe in its 
occult power, its chief raison d'etre would be at an end, 
and they proceeded cautiously and methodically. In 
this way nobody ever complained very loudly; it was 
only during the Combes Government that Europe be- 
came aware of a dangerous example of legal robbery, 
so that which might have been a source of indignation, 
and consequently of energy, was only the slow weaken- 
ing of a great moral influence. 

On the whole, while an anarchical form of De- 
mocracy was diminishing the chances of France on 
all sides, the public spirit was optimistic, or at any 
rate apathetic, and people lived on illusions and 
short-sighted selfishness. 

The politicians set the example of perfect satisfaction. 
They pretended every now and then to have great 
fears of a reaction which would bring back a Monarchy 
or a Dictatorship with all their abuses and the tyranny 
of the Church to boot, but only once — during the few 
months in which the Boulangist agitation was at its 
height — were they really sincere. They lived in the 
vain amusements of their party politics, and in the 
enjoyment of unhoped-for power; remote as they were 
from any ambition to influence European politics, they 
cherished the comforting illusion that peace never 
brings on war, and that France might dwindle while 



The Public Spirit 99 

others grew, but they at all events would not be 
affected by the diminution. 

Their electors were as blind. Everybody who is 
attentive to the variations of public opinion must 
know how difficult it is to resist them, how unavailing 
mere logic is when it has to withstand the quiet cer- 
tainties of the millions, and how inclined the philosopher 
himself is to doubt his own conclusions in the presence 
of a sceptical public spirit. Now, logic and even mere 
investigation were seldom brought to bear upon the 
anomalous situation which the preponderance of pro- 
fessional politicians had created and kept up in France. 
The Constitution was known to be a paradox, but it 
might be amended. Something was sure to happen; a 
man could not but arise; the Republic was so young, it 
would be absurd to despond over it before giving it a 
fair trial. Besides it was evidently useless to struggle 
against it. The Revolution was one great fact which 
outweighed many logical principles; it was also a fact 
that its main notions were in the air everywhere, and 
that no human power could resist them. There were 
signs of an imminent change even in Turkey, and in 
Russia. Republics were bound to succeed Monarchies 
in Europe as in America, and was it not better for a 
country to have forestalled the inevitable transforma- 
tions? The French Republic was in the hands of the 
Freemasons, no doubt, and this was productive of 
woes, but the Freemasons could not go on for ever, and 
was it not remarkable that their everlastingly-repeated 
motto, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, was after all an 
epitome of the gospel? Some day, surely, these words 
would be something better than empty sounds, and 
an era of idealism and prosperity should begin. 

It is so true that this confidence in an unforeseen 



loo The Deterioration of France 

development was universal that in 1890, twelve years 
after the first indications of the Republican ill-will 
against CathoHcism — when Leo XIII advised the 
French clergy to adhere unreservedly to the Republic 
and to preach loyalty to their flocks — the enthusiasm 
was almost universal; all the younger men had long 
anticipated the Pope's advice and welcomed it as a 
liberation from trammels. 

This generous hope in the future was not founded 
exclusively on dreams and clouds. Facts would fre- 
quently give croakers the lie. The colonial policy was 
more a success than a failure; Ferry and his disciples 
were succeeded by M61ine — a converted Communist — 
and by Hanotaux ; the Russian alliance was an event 
which could not be exaggerated; trade was said to be 
flat, but statistics proved that it was not so ; as to fears 
of war, for ever circulated, for ever belied by events, 
they were bugbears which grew to be the more dis- 
believed as they were more talked about. 

On the whole, there ran deep in France an under- 
current of the enthusiasm which had fancied the Re- 
public so fair while the Empire was old and tottering, 
and, this enthusiasm preventing any attempt at a 
reasoned criticism of the Constitution and anticipation 
of its inevitable shortcomings, delusions and optimism 
prevailed. Such a state of public opinion is apt to be 
translated into florid political speeches or into occa- 
sional popular demonstrations, and of these there was 
great plenty. But speeches and demonstrations corre- 
spond only to paroxysms, and between such outbursts 
the philosophy of the man in the street is dominant. 
But that of the ncwspaper-rcadcr, with enough leisure 
to know what he thinks and enough of the hereditary 
French outspokenness not to be afraid of the expression 



The Public Spirit loi 

of his thoughts, is active. This latent philosophy of the 
Third Republic was by no means of the high or noble 
order. 

Lurking more or less deeply under the surface is 
the belief of great and small in Progress; the certainty 
that Science, that is to say Light, must produce civiliza- 
tion and prosperity; this is the basis of the universal 
optimism. But beside this, there is the moral pessimism 
distinguishable in all the literary forms of the nine- 
teenth century, and above all in the Naturalism which 
is characteristically the literature of this age. Ideas are 
great and noble, but men are low, selfish, and fre- 
quently hypocritical. Politicians above all are coarse 
charlatans, and it takes the stupidity of the mob to be 
taken in by their claptrap. Rich people are selfish, and 
tyrannical to cruelty; but the poor would be as bad 
if they were rich. Everybody is selfish. The only 
philosophical statement that is never challenged is the 
utilitarian postulate: Whatever we do is done out of 
self-interest, and virtue properly analysed is the most 
refined form of selfishness. This, added to the current 
notions about the non-existence of free-will, leaves 
everybody satisfied with his own mediocrity and 
secretly elated at discovering in himself the vague 
generosity bound with the formula bequeathed by the 
Revolution. "We are pretty low, but we might be 
much worse," probably would express the universal 
feeling. In this way pessimism is once more corrected 
into a sort of optimism. 

Political scepticism is as widely spread as its philo- 
sophical counterpart. Even literary people are ex- 
tremely ignorant of history, and build their judgments 
upon psychological analyses which they generalize 
freely. The idea is that abuses have always existed, 



102 The Deterioration of France 

and exist or will soon exist everywhere. The true 
philosophy is to make up one's mind that things will 
not mend in our lifetime, and that the inevitable im- 
provement which the Deus ex machina, Progress, will 
some day bring about will be so slow that its witnesses 
can hardly perceive it, and consequently they will not 
be better off than we are. When comparisons between 
neighbouring countries and France are suggested, a 
doubtful shrug is all that is vouchsafed in answer; who 
can verify those statements? besides, what does it 
matter? all civilized countries are in the same boat; if 
sortie are in a clearer or happier condition than the 
others, they will either be soon corrupted down to the 
common level or, on the contrary, their superiority must 
in time act as a ferment to the benefit of the others. 

The only possibility that is really dreaded is a war, 
but that possibility luckily is but a product of ancestral 
imaginations ; in fact war is an impossibility. Govern- 
ments realize that conditions are changed, that what 
used to be gained in past times by territorial expansion 
is now gained by greater facilities for commerce; it is 
proved scientifically that a successful war is as dis- 
astrous as a defeat ; besides, governments are not alone 
the arbitrators of peace nowadays; even the humblest 
peasant has his say, and the international press — in 
close connexion with the international finance — ^is his 
organ as well as his defender. No, wars are impossibili- 
ties; alliances are lightning conductors conceived in a 
manner entirely new and civilized; the only thing is to 
live and let live, and not be disturbed by bugbears. 

This last formula leads directly to the peaceful and 
often smiling, but at core cowardly indulgence which is 
characteristic of the Third Republic. There being no 
obvious patriotic ideal, and the government impressing 



The Public Spirit 103 

individuals with a marked idea that legislation is made 
for them and not for society, there cannot be any such 
patriotism as is to be seen in Germany, Italy, the 
United States, and especially Japan, Each one thinks 
of himself and says it with perfect frankness. Money 
is despised instead of being cherished, as it was in past 
ages, for purposes worth the while, but it is universally 
sought as the only means of making life enjoyable. 
For the same reason the ancient views concerning the 
family are not only discarded but ridiculed, and 
Malthusianism is preached unblushingly with the con- 
stant connivance of the Government. 

Selfishness is never cheerful, and this period is no 
exception; there is a sort of dreary gaiety in life and 
literature and on the stage — the admixture of pessim- 
ism, of excitement often artificially created, of frankness 
constantly exaggerated to cynicism, and of unman- 
liness complacently displayed which modern slang calls 
veulerie. Read the works of Gyp, of Lavedan, of Don- 
nay, and of their numberless imitators; you will see 
the same enervation made pitiful by its very conscious- 
ness ; all these people have not much brains, apparently 
little heart, often the coarse manners which Jewish 
materialism diffuses with money, but they know their 
degradation, they analyse it, and they would suffer 
from it if their emotions were not so completely blunted. 

All the vices which people had without quite realiz- 
ing them under the Empire these degenerates have with 
full consciousness. There is an abyss between them 
and the characters of Augier, for instance, who only 
seem as if they were trying to be roues. 

It would be superfluous to say that all these dreamers, 
money-makers, or pleasure-seekers are incapable of the 
intellectual attitude which, from the patriotic stand- 



104 The Deterioration of France 

point, alone matters; they never look beyond their 
immediate circle of needs or passions, and the relation 
of France to the rest of Europe is as indifferent to them 
as if their home were really Sirius, 

To conclude: in 1898, almost thirty years after the 
war, France appears much more remote from the 
possibility of La Revanche than in 1875. Her rivals, 
especially Germany and Italy, have progressed while 
she remained stationary at home, and only expanded 
overseas where — owing to the lack of a navy — her 
power is almost nominal. Her real masters are irre- 
sponsible assemblies chosen without any respect to her 
vital interests as a nation, and the divisions and 
contradictions of these assemblies are glaringly visible. 
She has no settled policy in Europe, and her alliance 
with Russia bears in consequence the appearance more 
of a protection than of an alliance for definite purposes. 
Of the lack of a responsible authority, and of the gradual 
settling of the country into the position of a nation of 
second order, or what one begins to call a puissance 
d'appui, the public is only vaguely aware and cares 
little. They console themselves with a philosophy 
based on the inevitableness of universal decline, and 
above all with the new facilities for making money ; the 
feeling which the foreigner who observed France the 
most carefully during that period ' met with everywhere 
is expressed in the stereotyped phrase: I take no in- 
terest in politics. In fact, politics seem to be left 
entirely to themselves ; that is to say, a certain number 
of ideas called Republican are exploited by a few 
hundred professionals who, unable to criticize them, 
but finding it easy to handle them against less un- 
scrupulous rivals, lose their heads over them, as specu- 

* Mr. Bodley in his admirable work, France. 



Dreyfusism 105 

lators do in a boom. It is to this kind of intoxication 
that the period ending in 1898 leads us, and during the 
following seven years, which we shall presently review, a 
sort of destructive folly possesses politicians ; they wildly 
go to work, and what they do is nothing short of a sack- 
age of France in the name of reason and justice. 

I 898-1 905 

10. Deterioration of France hy International Socialism 

It is remarkable that this period does not coincide 
entirely with what it is agreed to call "bad govern- 
ments." In 1898, the Fashoda incident and the return 
of a new Chamber compelled M. Meline to give up 
office, but M. Dupuy, who succeeded him, with M. de 
Freycinet as Foreign Minister, held the same principles. 
Moreover, to all intents and purposes, the same spirit 
of moderation which M. Spuller had termed Vesprit 
nouveau prevailed in the Cabinet. Yet it is impossible 
not to date the great disorganization of France from 
1898, and this shows how inefficient even good men can 
be under a Constitution like that of 1875. A spirit 
spread over France which first of all nullified the good 
intentions of M. Dupuy and later of M. Waldeck- 
Rousseau, and in four years' time this destructive spirit 
produced M. Combes. It is needless to remind the 
reader that the period of violence which will be known 
in history as Combism was prepared by the apparent 
idealism of the Dreyfusist agitation. 

II. Dreyfusism 

For many years it was impossible to speak of the 
Dreyfus affair, no matter how historically, without giv- 



io6 The Deterioration of France 

ing offence; one had to be warmly favourable to Drey- 
fus or run the risk of being regarded as meanly opposed 
to him, and under such circumstances any attempt at 
a matter-of-fact presentment of the events and their 
concatenation was out of the question. To-day, the 
lesson of history has gradually become known, even to 
people living out of France, and one may safely say, 
what I just hinted at, and what is as clear as daylight, 
viz., that Combism came out of Dreyfusism as the 
steam out of heat. 

The chief facts of the case are in every memory. 
In 1895, Captain Dreyfus was condemned to perpetual 
imprisonment on the charge of delivering important 
military documents to a foreign power, and there were 
no protests against the verdict; a number of French 
officers about whose honour there could be no doubt 
had expressed their conviction that Dreyfus was guilty, 
and few voices were heard in his defence. The con- 
demnation was welcomed with loud applause by the 
many Frenchmen who had sided with the famous 
journalist, Edouard Drumont, in his long campaign 
against the Jews. To Drumont the Jew was ob- 
jectionable, not because of his religion, but on account 
of his race and of the characteristics which belong to it. 
The Jews were not French, and never could be French. 
They lived in France, as everywhere else, as if they 
were encamped, getting as much as they could out of the 
country but always ready to emigrate to another if they 
thought it advantageous. So it was absurd to speak 
without noticing the impropriety of "Jewish officers in 
the French army"; one might as well have spoken of 
"German officers in the French army." All the mis- 
take came from regarding the Jew as merely a person 
of another religion. It was clear that the treason of 



Dreyfusism 107 

Dreyfus — demonstrated as it seemed to be in 1895 — ■ 
was an irrefutable proof of the soundness of Drumont's 
theory, and the satisfaction of his supporters or admirers 
was perfect jubilation. 

The irritation of other people was no less. The 
Jews naturally felt the weight of a sentence which 
seemed to fall heavily upon them, but for other reasons 
many Frenchmen disliked it as much as they did. 
The army in 1895 was as popular as ever it had been 
since the days of Napoleon the First, and the debates 
of the Court-Martial, with a revelation of the danger to 
which the military preparation of France had been 
exposed, had only made it the more popular. Yet, 
as I said, there were dissenters. The jealousy which the 
politicians of the Third Republic felt from the first 
against the army, its dashing brilliance, its order, its 
disciplined intelligence, and above all the everlasting 
possibility of some exceptionally popular officer throw- 
ing civilian rivals into the shade, existed also to some 
extent among the bourgeoisie. Young men belonging 
to those classes, and compelled to serve like everybody 
else, resented having to obey peasant petty officers. 
Many whom the dry intellectual spirit of the times had 
impregnated from their infancy, and who affected to 
admit no superiority except that of the brain, spoke 
of their military service as a sort of martyrdom during 
which culture had to submit to brute force, and intelli- 
gence was degraded to mean employments. These 
people had seen with displeasure popular favour greet 
the General Staff on many occasions during the first 
proceedings of the Affair. When, in 1897, rumours 
began to be circulated that everything had not been 
perfectly regular in the judgment of 1895, it is not to 
be wondered at if these rumours were welcomed with 



io8 The Deterioration of France 

intense interest. And when, in August, 189S, an officer, 
who was an anti-Semite too, revealed that one of the 
chief documents which had helped in inclining the 
opinion of the Court-Martial against Dreyfus had been 
forged by Lieutenant-Colonel Henry, there .vas such an 
outburst as those who witnessed it can never forget. 
In a moment the whole outlook changed; Dreyfus 
appeared as a martyr, and the General Staff, including 
three Ministers of War who had been unanimous in 
their conviction that the officer was guilty, seemed to be 
nothing else than the accomplices of a forger. In a 
few weeks the case ceased to be a local affair to become 
the most exciting judiciary drama of modern times. 
In every part of Europe, Dreyfus found friends not 
only among his co-religionists who, even in poor 
Russian villages, subscribed towards his justification, 
but among all those who imagined with increasing in- 
dignation that justice had been denied an innocent man. 
Few were the men famous in literature or science who 
did not express their feelings in public utterances. 

Often one could detect in these declarations the 
lurking suspicion that Dreyfus had been condemned in 
a Catholic country because he was not a Catholic, and 
so the ill-treated officer became doubly a martyr. 
Often also it was evident that people who from some 
racial antagonism hated France were glad of this 
chance to vent their ill-will. At any rate the state 
of opinion was such that the campaign in favour of 
Dreyfus seemed more like a crusade, but a crusade of 
which indignation and hatred more than love and 
reverence were the chief elements. 

The last months of 1898 and most of 1899 were filled 
by this overwhelming agitation, and it mattered little 
that M. Dupuy or anybody else was at the head of 



Dreyfusism 109 

affairs. Common parlance alludes to the previous years 
as the Meline Government, but the twelvemonth preced- 
ing July, 1899, is never spoken of as the Dupuy Govern- 
ment; it is simply called "the time of the Affair." 

In July, 1899, M. Dupuy fell, and it became evident 
that the Cabinet which succeeded his would be chosen 
exclusively to supervise the revision of Dreyfus's case. 
M. Poincare, the future President of the Republic, 
failed in forming a Cabinet, owing to M. Leon Bour- 
geois's aversion to responsibilities, and the mission 
was finally entrusted to M. Waldeck- Rousseau. This 
gentleman was a barrister of high fame and standing, 
with an eminently judicial head, and a self-control 
which in the Chamber as well as at the Law Courts 
secured him respect and influence. Politically, he had 
always been considered a Moderate, and even a touch 
of anti-clericalism did not make him lose this label. 
It appeared probable from the moment his name was 
mentioned that he would devote his cool energies and 
his professional capacities to an entirely judicial ter- 
mination of the case over which the whole world hung 
breathless. 

However, it is not easy to be a politician and to be 
purely judicial, even if one seems predestined for the 
task. There was universal surprise when M. Waldeck- 
Rousseau took into the Cabinet M. Millerand, who at 
the time was a very different man from what he is 
to-day, and embodied, even more than M. Jaures, the 
most tincompromising Socialism. But M. Millerand 
was very like M. Waldeck-Rousseau in many ways, 
clear-headed, business-like, persevering, and above the 
suspicion of dishonesty. Probably the new Prime 
Minister thought rather of his collaborator's abilities 
than of the political tendency he represented, and did 



no The Deterioration of France 

not suspect that the Socialists would be raised by the 
elevation of their leader to a position they had never 
occupied before. He was right about M. Millerand, 
whose tenure of office made him grow to be the unique 
statesman we have known him since, but, as I shall 
presently show, he made a mistake about the conse- 
quences of choosing a Minister from among a group 
which, until then, had been regarded as gratuitously 
violent and possessed of no positive influence. 

In September, 1899, Dreyfus was tried again by a 
Court-Martial at Rennes, once more declared guilty 
of treason by five votes against two, but this time it 
was with extenuating circumstances, and almost im- 
mediately M. Waldeck-Rousseau issued a decree par- 
doning him. Dreyfus accepted his pardon and the 
Affair seemed practically closed, but Dreyfusism did not 
disappear with the pretext which had given rise to it. 
There remained a group of personal friends of Dreyfus 
who went on with the legal agitation until they had 
him rehabiUtated, not by a Court-Martial but by the 
Court of Cassation, and somewhat irregularly. Above 
all, the many people who had seen in the Affair a peg 
on which to hang their own animosities were more 
flushed than sobered by the step taken by M. Waldeck- 
Rousseau, and after the fight they insisted on revenge. 
The chief enemy had been the General Staff, and, in 
fact, the army with all the manifestations of the military 
spirit. But many of the Staff officers were supposed to 
be practising Catholics and likely to be influenced by 
the Jesuits ; the hypocrisy or prejudices of some French- 
men, helped by the ignorance of millions of foreigners 
of the real state of France, had presented the Dreyfus 
Affair as a case of religious persecution, and the Church 
was denounced as bitterly as the army. 



Dreyfusism iii 

While the trial at Rennes was going on, there was a 
riot in Paris — the first that had been seen since the 
Commune — and the leaders had as their chief object 
the destruction of a church, which, in fact, was pillaged. 
Besides, it has been a constant tradition with the Third 
Republic to create unanimity against the Church among 
politicians whenever divisions on other subjects became 
alarming, and this was a rare occasion for reconciling 
the Radicals with the rising Socialist party. M. Wal- 
deck-Rousseau soon announced his intention to take 
measures against the moines ligueurs et marchands, 
meaning the Jesuits and the Assumptionists who at the 
time edited the Croix newspaper and had been resolute 
anti-Dreyfusists. 

M. Waldeck-Rousseau, in an address which he de- 
livered later on at Toulouse, spoke his mind openly 
on the subject of the religious orders. Evidently his 
own opinion was not only that some religious orders 
were unduly mixed up in politics, and that the education 
given in the Jesuits' schools divided the French youth 
into two antagonistic portions, but also that religious 
vows in themselves were unnatural and in contradiction 
with the modern notion of human liberty. But he was 
too much of a legalist to make such a doctrine the basis 
of a new legislation, and whatever may have been the 
influence upon him of the anti-religious atmosphere or of 
his own well-known wrongs, the law with which he 
wanted to hit at the influence of the Jesuits and the 
Assumptionists did not wear the appearance of an 
exception. At the beginning of the twentieth century, 
while all the other countries, including so-called be- 
nighted monarchies, had long legislated on the right 
of association, the French Republic had no Association 
Law, and its absence was one of the standing grievances 



112 The Deterioration of France 

of the Socialists. M. Waldeck-Rousseau therefore 
placed a bill for the regularization of associations on 
the table of the Chamber. This bill made it compul- 
sory for every association not already approved by 
previous laws or decrees to state its object, give in the 
names of its members, and demand a special authoriza- 
tion. A great many religious orders like the Sulpitians, 
the Christian Brothers, the Sisters of Charity, etc., 
had long been approved, and, consequently need not 
apply for authorization, but hundreds of other orders 
merely existed on tolerance, and would be compelled by 
the new law to put in a declaration, and demand an 
authorization, which, of course. Parliament would grant 
only with the greatest caution. Among the number 
were the Jesuits and Assumptionists, whose doom was 
inevitable, whether they applied for an authorization 
sure to be refused, or preferred the simpler course of 
dispersing of their own accord. 

The Association Bill only became law in 1901. Many 
religious communities — like the Benedictines now at 
Quarr Abbey, in the Isle of Wight — thought it more 
dignified to leave the country before its enactment, and 
it soon appeared that this had been wisdom too; the 
rest submitted to the law, sent in the names of their 
members and the inventory of their property, and 
demanded authorization. But as they did so, the anti- 
religious feeling in the Chamber, in the press, and 
often in the country, became worse instead of decreas- 
ing. M. Waldeck-Rousseau appeared more and more 
as the only Moderate in his Cabinet, and the whole 
atmosphere seemed charged with threats. It was ob- 
vious that the hatred which had been roused by the 
Affair would not be satisfied until revenge had been 
wreaked; and while the Prime Minister did his best to 



Combism 113 

adjust things according to his judicial spirit, it seemed 
impossible that his entourage should use the new law as 
a law and not as a weapon. 

12. Combism 

The general election of 1902 returned a stronger 
Socialist group than there had been in the outgoing 
Chamber. M. Waldeck-Rousseau probably felt that 
his supporters might soon become his masters, and he 
would not take the risk. He went out before the new 
Chamber met, and advised President Loubet to apply- 
to M. Combes for the formation of a new Cabinet. 

M. Combes, though he never was in orders, had 
worn the clerical habit for several years before taking 
up medicine, and gradually politics, in the department 
of Charente. Politics had introduced him to Free- 
masonry, and when the sometime abbe got himself 
elected a deputy, he was as anti-clerical as could be 
desired. He soon specialized in educational legislation, 
preparing at least two bills of a decidedly Erastian 
character, and not afraid of the drastic appearance he 
gave to their application. Nobody said anything 
against his integrity, and he was supposed to be well 
informed. But whether he had not more shrewdness 
than intelligence, and more obstinacy than real will- 
power, was a problem which people generally solved 
against him. It would be astonishing that such a man 
should have been chosen by the wise Waldeck-Rous- 
seau, if it were not an historical law of the Third Re- 
public that its leaders are led. 

As I said above, the Socialist party was stronger in 
the Chamber of 1902 than in the previous one, and its 
leader was at present Jean Jaures. The passage of M. 

8 



114 The Deterioration of France 

Millerand through office had done what it invariably 
does for every well-balanced mind: it had given him a 
sense of realities. From a Socialist with the usual 
systematic views, and a ringleader with the proper 
amount of recklessness, he had become the decided 
Reformist he has been since as Minister of Labour, and 
the patriot he showed himself as Minister of War. At 
any rate, he was regarded in 1902 — when people still 
believed that Socialist deputies were formidable dare- 
devils ready for the universal overthrow or chambarde- 
ment — as too much of a bourgeois to represent the party ; 
and Jaures — who, on the contrary, was a converted 
bourgeois — had taken his place. 

M. Combes chose to place the centre of his majority 
as near as possible to the Extreme Left, and immedi- 
ately Jaures with his eloquence, his warm-heartedness, 
the admixture of vagueness and audacity of his con- 
ceptions, above all, with the tactical dexterity which 
his turgidness would not seem to indicate, became the 
real leader of the Cabinet. Nobody exemplified to 
greater perfection the true Dreyfusist spirit as distin- 
guished from personal devotion to Dreyfus. He had 
been a professor, and a professor of philosophy — at a 
time when philosophy was either the crudest mechan- 
ism or the most unreal Idealism — and his tendency was 
towards the latter in its vaguest form. He was typically 
what the cant of the day called an "intellectual" — that 
is to say, a man bred in the purely speculative tradition 
of the early Taine and the early Renan, and completely 
ignorant of other realities than the hagglings and bar- 
gainings of parliamentary groups or electoral com- 
mittees. A sort of prophet withal, but a prophet in 
words, not in true visions; his rich, organ-like voice, 
the volume of his periods, the belief in his words which 



Combism 115 

such men frequently have because of the real though 
dim conviction existing in their subconsciousness, lent 
a certain efficiency to the words Progress, Ideal, Fra- 
ternity, endlessly repeated in his speeches. But there 
was no divine insight in him, and his power depended 
on his voice. Thus equipped, he went on preaching the 
abolition of classes, of hatreds, of frontiers of all kinds; 
he prophesied the reign of justice and the end of war, 
of gold, of superstition. The Dreyfus Affair, with the 
outburst of generosity it had created, leading the 
French to sacrifice everything dearest to them to one 
man for the sake of justice, seemed to him the beginning 
of the new era, and as, for the first time, he had behind 
him forty or fifty deputies, it seemed as if all his pre- 
dictions were half fulfilled already. This was the man 
to whose vote the new Prime Minister was not afraid 
to attach his destinies. 

For if the word Combism connotes a spirit and the 
manifestations of that spirit which the following chap- 
ters will recapitulate, it also represents a political sys- 
tem which had never been tested before, and which 
lasted during three years. No Prime Minister ever 
realized so perfectly as M. Combes that he was nothing 
but an intermediary between the pleasure of the Cham- 
ber and the administration of affairs, or acted as con- 
sistently with that belief. Every day the Cabinet 
would meet as usual at the Ely see, and the routine of 
government seemed to be the same as ever; but every 
day also a consultation of a much more practical 
character was held at the Chamber or in the Premier's 
office. There M. Combes met the chiefs or whips of the 
various groups, not, of course, in the whole Chamber, 
but in the majority; submitted to them the order of 
the day, took their opinion, made sure by a very simple 



ii6 The Deterioration of France 

calculation of the number of votes that each opinion 
represented, and decided upon ministerial action ac- 
cordingly. This substitution of a few influential depu- 
ties for the Cabinet nullified, of course, the power of the 
President, that of the Senate, the responsibility of the 
Ministers, and the will of that portion of the country 
which the minority platonically represents ; all this was 
in the true Jacobin tradition, but it was also in the 
spirit of the constitution logically interpreted, and 
protests were few and feeble. 

It was natural that in these daily conventions M. 
Jaures should be the principal orator. One sign to his 
group would have been enough to bring about the 
downfall of the Cabinet, and the Socialist leader occu- 
pied the privileged situation of the man who all the time 
sacrifices his real wishes to those of the less daring men 
he condescends to support. In fact, the three years of 
M. Combes's office were also the three years of M. 
Jaur^s's hegemony. Until 1905, the policy of the 
Cabinet was exactly that which would have been 
adopted had the Socialist leader been the actual 
Premier, and popular feeling was not deceived by 
appearances. The singing at official ceremonies of 
the Internationale instead of the Marseillaise, in the 
presence of the undisturbed Prime Minister, was 
the clear manifestation of the true state of affairs. But 
the reader ought not to infer that Socialist legislation 
was continuously passed during that period. In 1902, 
the Socialists, being for the first time in unquestioned 
ascendancy, appeared formidable both from their loud 
doctrine and their number. But since then, we have 
realized that a Socialist deputy is a bourgeois even if he 
was a workman a few weeks before ; we have also heard 
M. Jaures repeatedly promise what he called "a vast 



Combism 117 

legislative text," embodying his doctrine for practical 
purposes, and we have seen him everlastingly evade 
the fulfilment of his promise; for years he conducted 
the work of the Chamber without even producing an 
Income Tax Law. We are not, therefore, very much 
surprised to find, on looking back to the history of 
Combism, that it was much more a systematic destruc- 
tion than a rebuilding of society. In fact, the next 
chapters will be exclusively filled with what the Cham- 
ber did against this or that ; and I should be very much 
at a loss to state any improvement or even any positive 
step due to its initiative. 

In what spirit all this destruction was carried on 
is not clear to everybody. If you read the reminis- 
cences of men like M. Peguy or M, Daniel Halevy, or 
if you listen to less-known witnesses of the Dreyfusist 
drama, you will often be led to conclude that a con- 
siderable amount of genuine Idealism and true human 
kindness was wasted during those eventful years. But 
if you go back to the newspapers of the period, dip into 
the Parliamentary proceedings in the Officiel, or con- 
sult your own impression of the atmosphere created by 
M. Combes 's brutality, ill-breeding, recklessness are the 
words which come naturally to your lips. The chief 
motive of the action of the politicians seems to have 
been the delight of going to work violently without any 
danger to themselves, and the Idealism appears only to 
have been the cherished illusion of a few individuals, 
cleverly used by Jaures to cover the vulgarity of the 
rest. Yet thousands of excellent Frenchmen who had 
been convinced Dreyfusists remained in the Dreyfusist 
state of mind long after Dreyfusism had passed into 
Combism, and looked on the policy -of revenge without 
being able to make up their minds that they connived 



ii8 The Deterioration of France 

at an anti-patriotic work. Even at the present day 
the bewilderment in which they found themselves 
leaves them doubtful and hesitating where men with a 
larger share of the national temperament will not 
waver a moment. 

13. Cambism and the Church 

The quarrel of the Dreyfusists was apparently with 
the army, but it was also with the Church, which had 
abetted the officers, and M. Combes's anti-clerical feel- 
ings, along with the opportunity which the Association 
Law offered, were sure to keep his attention at first 
on the religious orders. We know with certitude what 
M. Waldeck-Rousseau's intentions had been with re- 
gard to them. He had no sympathy with the Jesuits, 
and he felt an especial dislike against the Assumption- 
ists, whom he had once described as "trading, plotting 
monks." About these his mind was evidently made 
up. There was also a clause in the Association Law 
which its author must have known to be irreconcilable 
with the continuance of the more important orders. 
The Benedictines, Franciscans, Dominicans, etc., are, 
like the Jesuits, responsible only to the Pope, and 
highly value their exemption from episcopal jurisdic- 
tion. Now, M. Waldeck-Rousseau wanted all orders 
to be in future under the bishops who should answer to 
the Government for their action. This condition, of 
course, made authorization an impossibility for those 
who would not or could not renounce their privilege. 
In spite of this unfortunate circumstance, it seemed that 
the Act was bringing the orders, which the Concordat 
of 1802 had ignored, under the protection which the 
same Concordat bestowed on the bishops and secular 



Combism and the Church 119 

clergy. In fact, M. Waldeck-Rousseau had been able 
to say without fear of contradiction, that he was giving 
the monks and nuns their saving charter. For there 
was Httle doubt that the congregations that applied for 
authorization would easily get it, and they were by no 
means degrading themselves by submitting to a mea- 
sure which, with one exceptional clause, was only the 
common law of the land. It must be confessed that the 
exception to which I am alluding, was not in keeping 
with the rest of M. Waldeck-Rousseau's liberal dis- 
positions. Whereas authorization would be granted to 
an individual order only by an Act of Parliament and 
after a debate in the Chamber or Senate, the same could 
always be revoked by a decree from the Council of 
Ministers; so, it took the consent of the country — as 
represented by Parliament — to give legal existence to a 
religious association, but an arbitrary act of the Gov- 
ernment was enough to withdraw it. This certainly 
was not democratic, but it could be interpreted as a 
barrier against clericalism, and not an obstacle in the 
way of the religious life of the country. On the whole, 
when M. Waldeck-Rousseau retired, the views of Gov- 
ernment in connection with Catholicism might be con- 
strued as hardly different from those which prevailed 
in the days when the sovereign could be on his guard 
against episcopal interference, without disbelieving a 
word of the bishops' teaching. 

All this assumed a completely different appearance 
the moment M. Combes took office, and the Association 
Law, instead of a charter, became a weapon which the 
new Prime Minister handled sometimes brutally, some- 
times with astuteness, changing freely besides its 
interpretation and even its letter. The law said that 
each demand for authorization was to be separately 



I20 The Deterioration of France 

examined by the Chamber or Senate. M. Combes de- 
cided that all the applications should be thrown into 
three sections, and not examined separately, but ac- 
cepted or rejected in a lump. This showed the evident 
intention to make short work of the orders, and the 
issue did not belie the forecast. It will remain in the 
history of France as a monstrous injustice that a law 
should have been used as a decoy, even if it had not 
been devised as one. All the applications were rejected, 
the confiscation of the property of religious orders was 
pronounced, and the lamentable sight of the dispersion 
of poor monks and nuns who had always lived in com- 
munities began to sicken all except politicians. The 
religious who had some hope of being able to reform 
themselves abroad left France for England, Belgium, 
Spain, Italy, or America. The rest were compelled to 
stay singly where they were, in great risk of the calami- 
ties which M. Rene Bazin describes in VIsolee. 

There was a universal feeling of compassion among 
those who could do nothing to remedy this state of 
affairs, but M. Combes found numberless apologists 
in Parliament and in the press. Those who observed 
the public spirit at that time were shocked to find how 
easily the average man gets reconciled to injustice the 
moment it is done and the ghost of a reason can be 
found for it. The reason in this case was an ideology in 
the truest spirit of the Revolution. Man, it was argued, 
is entitled to as much freedom as will not be hurtful to 
his neighbour, but it does not follow — as would at first 
sight appear — that monasticism should be tolerated on 
the pleas that a man may be a monk if he chooses to 
become one. The other side of the argument is that 
nobody ought to be suffered to renounce his own per- 
sonality by taking the vows of obedience, poverty, and 



Combism and the Church 121 

celibacy. As a conclusion, it appeared that M. Combes 
had, after all, been a champion of liberty and a redeemer 
of slaves, even if he acted rather too energetically. 

There was another corollary which was even more 
logical. If the religious vows were so immoral that 
their immorality warranted the refusal of authorization 
to the orders which applied for it, that must be a 
sufficient reason for the withdrawal of authorization 
from those which already possessed it. The principle — 
strictly a jurist's principle — of the Act of 1901, was 
against this further step, but the Premier might plead 
that the Act contained a clause empowering the Cabi- 
net to withdraw authorization whenever they thought 
it advisable; and besides, another bill could easily be 
introduced to amend the Act. In fact, in March, 1904, 
a bill was read, depriving the teaching orders — already 
authorized — of their legal existence. It was passed in 
July of the same year, and immediately the process of 
expulsion and confiscation was resumed. 

The whole proceeding reminded one forcibly of the 
terrible anecdote of the Toulon massacres in 1793. 
The royalist prisoners had been arranged in a compact 
square on the parade ground, and the commissaires 
ordered artillery to be fired at them until nobody was 
left standing. Then the commissaires walked up to the 
awful spot, and fearing lest some of the prisoners should 
pretend death and meditate flight, they called out loud : 
"Let those who are not dead get up, the Republic 
pardons them." Here and there a few men rose from 
the heap, and were promptly cut down again. 

Placing a whole category of citizens outside the law 
for so-called philosophical reasons, expulsions, confisca- 
tions, are of a poor moral effect in a country. The 
immediate consequence of the religious persecution was 



122 The Deterioration of France 

to sharpen the appetites of the Socialists in and out of 
ParUament, and to persuade them that the nationaliza- 
tion of the larger enterprises — the railways, mines, etc. 
— could be accomplished without danger. But there 
was another. The monastic orders were the chief instru- 
ment of French influence abroad, especially in the East, 
and the damage to this influence soon became per- 
ceptible, and in a few years appeared irreparable. The 
Government had not been logical enough to apply to 
the communities at Constantinople or Beyrout the 
treatment they dealt to the sister convents in Paris, 
but it was inevitable that the suppression of the 
novitiates at home should promptly reduce the numbers 
of the religious abroad. Due warning was given on 
this point to the Chamber by M. de Mun, M. Denys 
Cochin, and other specialists on the Eastern questions; 
it was clearly pointed out that the gradual stepping in 
of the excommunicate King of Italy with his monks 
and nuns, which we have seen of late years, was a 
certainty ; but the majority of M, Combes had already 
taken the habit of answering such arguments with the 
superb disdain of ignorance and stupidity by the crush- 
ing remark that foreign considerations ought not to be 
suffered in the home politics of France, It is the classic 
speech of the madman, who sets his house on fire, to the 
neighbours who send for the fire brigade. 

14. Combism and Rome 

The clause in the Association Law which substituted 
the Bishops for the Pope as answerable for the doings of 
the monastic orders amounted to a solemn declaration 
of mistrust against Rome, and the logic of Combism was 
sure to evolve a legislation from it. It had long been 



Combism and Rome 123 

the habit of the Radicals, with M. Clemenceau as their 
mouthpiece, to speak of the Pope as a foreign sovereign 
with a permanent army of his own in France, and of 
the Concordat as a fooHsh agreement which devoted 
forty million francs every year to the maintenance of a 
hostile clergy. Such an absurdity ought to be done 
away with without delay; the French Embassy to the 
Vatican must be suppressed, the clergy left to its own 
devices, and the practice of the Catholic religion reduced 
to an individual concern. Many who held this thesis 
were merely indifferent to religion, and the apparent 
logic of Disestablishment, combined with the usual 
French ignorance of European consequences, seduced 
them. Many others, however, among whom no doubt 
M. Clemenceau, Jaures, and generally the Freemasons, 
hoped and often professed their hope that, the support 
of the State once removed, the mouldy fabric of the 
Church would crumble to pieces, and science would be 
rid of the vain appearance which still stood between 
it and the popular consciousness. A few intelligent 
politicians would answer the champions of destruc- 
tion by pointing out that the suppression of the Con- 
cordat meant the loss for France of the long-valued 
protectorate of the Catholic Missions. A few jurists 
had an even more positive objection. The Concordat, 
they said, was a contract; when it was signed in 1802, 
the Government of France, which at the time did not 
profess to be exceptionally religious, was as anxious to 
see it in operation as the Pope, and consequently this 
contract could not be dissolved without a mutual con- 
sent; as to the forty millions yearly paid to the clergy, 
they were by no means a salary, they were a special 
fund consolidated at the time of the Concordat to 
prevent the clergy from suing the possessors of their 



124 The Deterioration of France 

property, and the true name of this fund was, it should 
not be forgotten, the Church Indemnity. Finally, there 
was the objection of the Galileans — still more numerous 
than might have been supposed — who asked: What 
purpose will be gained by making the clergy entirely 
Roman instead of being national? If you are afraid 
of the Pope's influence in the present arrangement, 
how much more ought you not to dread it under a 
regime which would leave it unrestrained ; of course, you 
can counteract this influence by forcible measures, 
but your action will inevitably wear the appearance of 
a persecution, and persecution is invariably ephemeral 
because it is repellent; after a time you will find the 
Church embittered against you and less hampered in 
her action than she ever was under the Concordat; do 
not give up the reality for a hope ; keep your hold upon 
her by preserving the right to appoint her bishops. 

All this common wisdom was wasted on people 
whom the intoxication of destruction was gaining 
more and more. Pretexts were sought to warrant 
the recall of the ambassador to the Vatican. A poor 
one was found in 1904 in a correspondence which the 
Pope had directly — instead of through the Ministry of 
Cults — with two bishops whose private life gave offence 
to their flocks. M. Delcasse wrote a short letter to the 
Secretary of State of Pope Pius X, stating that as the 
Vatican chose to correspond direct with the bishops, 
no French representative was necessary in Rome. 
Almost immediately the Concordat was denounced 
and a special bill — the Cultural Association Bill — was 
introduced to take its place. The whole of this bill 
was inspired by the childish desire to legislate about the 
clergy without even naming the Pope or the Bishops, 
and by replacing them by associations of lay people who 



Combism and Rome 125 

would be a sort of protecting barrier between the State, 
and the unapproachable clergy. This Bill, passed in 
the summer of 1905, was to be enforced a year after, 
but after a year the Pope would not let the French 
clergy recognize a constitution which ignored their 
bishops, and the Separation Law remained hanging in 
the air without anyone to apply it to. Immediately 
the bishops were turned out of their palaces and the 
priests out of their rectories — which I must say they 
would only have kept a few years longer had the law 
been acted upon. The Church property was con- 
fiscated and made over to the municipal councils; even 
the foundations for the dead, held so sacred by the 
people, were given a secular destination. As to the 
churches, the Government, not daring to take them 
away entirely from their occupants, made them over to 
the parishes on condition that they should not be used 
for secular purposes. 

The whole thing was conducted roughly and brutally 
whenever it appeared safe. The Government was not 
ashamed to have the archives of the Nuncio — left in 
Paris after his departure — seized by the police, and the 
correspondence of the Secretary of State since the 
Separation was published in the newspapers. 

The scandal of such a method was bad enough, 
but the effects of the Separation were not visible at 
once. It took a few years to see how the process of 
confiscation had scared people, how deep the appropri- 
ation of Church property had made the divisions 
between believers and unbelievers in rural parishes, 
how the sight of the parish priest turned out of his little 
house, of the bishop dispossessed of a palace which was 
frequently part of the cathedral, had created mistrust 
against the politicians, and anxiety among the faithful. 



126 The Deterioration of France 

It took even longer for many of the deputies who had 
supported the Separation Bill from indifference to 
religion to see that the resolution to govern a Catholic 
country in complete ignorance of the Pope — while 
Protestant monarchs frequently felt the need of a repre- 
sentative in Rome — was suicidal. In time, however, 
it appeared that Italy, Germany, and Spain were seiz- 
ing every opportunity to substitute their protectorate 
for that of France in Asia Minor and Northern Africa ; 
and the moment the Morocco, campaign began in earn- 
est it was a grievous annoyance for the French officers 
to see that, owing to the obstinacy of the Government, 
the priests who followed the army and took advantage 
of its advance were not French but Spanish. 

The politicians who had brought about this state of 
affairs never seemed to regret their blindness until 
quite recent times. Most of them thought only of 
making the most of the weakened condition of the 
Church to do away with the Christian belief. The 
government of M, Combes was the heyday of the 
Universites Populaires in which night after night pro- 
fessors thought they did a great service to their country 
by proving scientifically to suburban audiences that 
God does not exist. 

15. Combism and the Army 

The grudge which the government of M. Combes had 
against the Church they had even in a bitterer degree 
against the Army. There had always been a lurking 
antagonism between the Third Republic and the 
military element. The true founders of the Republic, 
the friends of Gambetta, looked askance at those hund- 
reds of thousands who said nothing, whose political 



Combism and the Army 127 

sympathies were unknown or were only too easy to 
divine, who preferred the superiority of silence, obedi- 
ence, and self-denial, while politicians were nothing 
but talk, self-assertion, and bare-faced interest. Year 
after year two hundred thousand young men, electors 
of to-morrow, were absorbed into that powerful body 
and taught to think nothing of words and be prepared 
for deeds. Professional Democrats living in everlasting 
terror of "the Man," the possible Napoleon who would 
make short work of their edifice of abstractions, felt 
that he must be there and might any day reappear. 
The priest, the magistrate, and the scholar were the 
representatives in various forms of the same ideal built 
upon order and making for the restoration of order. 
That this tendency was essential to the greatness of 
France, and that the action of France beyond her fron- 
tiers intimately depended on it, was nothing to men 
with whom party interests alone counted. 

It is not surprising therefore that the Dreyfus Affair, 
with the scandal of the Henry forgery, filled them with 
unbelievable joy, and that the verdict given at Rennes 
after the second judgment of the Court-Martial — which 
they thought must inevitably result in something like a 
solemn recantation — once more infuriated them. The 
combination of this spite with the more subtle spirit 
spread by Jaures resulted in a campaign which even 
outlived Combism — for it lasted until 19 10 — and had 
for its obvious object not only to humble and even 
humiliate the army before the civic element, but 
entirely to change its temperament and lower its ideal 
through what was called progressive democratization. 

It is painful to relate that the work of retaliation was 
begun by General de Gallifet, a true soldier, and in 
many ways a true aristocrat, whom M. Waldeck- 



128 The Deterioration of France 

Rousseau had selected to liquidate the Dreyfus Affair. 
Gallifet did away with the Superior Council of War, 
an admirable organism created by M. de Freycinet — 
who was not a soldier — for the examination of the most 
vital military questions and the promotion of the 
likeliest officers. From that date, the decision on the 
most momentous issues was left entirely to the Minister 
of War, who might be a civilian and would" seldom be 
very long in office. 

Yet the successor of Gallifet at the end of 1899 was 
not a civilian, and he remained in office until 1904, but 
it was unfortunately to the detriment of the army. 
General Andre had had a brilliant career, which the 
envied direction of the Ecole Polytechnigue had crowned, 
but it was the career of a functionary not of a soldier. 
General Andre had never been in the colonies, the only 
place where he might have learned what men like 
Duchesne or Gallieni knew so well; he was a theorist 
with a marked tendency to be a politician, and when he 
took office, it was well known that unfortunate habits 
of intemperance weakened what good points he might 
have. The present writer was a witness of a painful 
scene in the Chamber between him and M. Lasies, an 
ex-officer, in which he appeared as unmilitary as on 
the day when another deputy, Syveton, hit him in dis- 
gust and contempt before the whole Assembly. As it is, 
nobody can say more for him than that he spent a great 
deal of labour over the realization of the military ideas 
of the one man who provided ideas for all the members 
of the Combes Cabinet, M. Jaures. 

The division between two men — the Generalissime 
or General-in-chief, and the Chef d'Etat-Major or Staff 
Commandant- — of the supreme power in case of a war 
was the idea of General Andre, and it was undoubtedly 



Combism and the Army 129 

the idea of a man who mistrusted generals and wanted 
to subordinate their authority to that of the Govern- 
ment. The same mistrust, in the purest Dreyfusist 
spirit, appeared even more visibly in the repeated 
attempts at doing away with the Courts-Martial or 
introducing into them enough non-military judges to 
modify completely their character. But these mea- 
sures, the evident outcome of the Dreyfus Affair, were 
nothing compared to the slow and methodical progress 
of what was called the democratization of the army. 

No general could have shared more completely in 
the Socialists' belief that war — after thirty years of 
peace and the abandonment by the immense majority of 
the French of every idea of revenge against Germany — 
was an impossibility, and as there was in him a great 
deal of the humanitarian's zeal, he turned it towards 
a new conception of the military service. Not being a 
preparation for war, it must be a preparation for some- 
thing else, and the regiments became a kind of school, 
while the officers were expected to teach their men all 
the arts of peace. Lectures were given to them fre- 
quently, some of which — on bee, pigeon-raising, or 
rabbit-breeding, for instance — would have often been 
much better if they had been the work of experienced 
privates instead of the random effort of their chiefs to be 
useful according to the new formula. 

The regiments, instead of being frequently trans- 
ferred, as had been the tradition in the old army, were 
kept in the same towns, and the recruits never were 
sent away from their native districts. 

The service, which in the first years of the Republic 
still lasted five years, had been gradually reduced first 
to four and then to three years. Many officers de- 
clared that a new reduction was impossible, because it 
9 



130 The Deterioration of France 

would make the training of cavalry men impossible, 
and above all because the numbers of the French 
Army would become ridiculous compared with those of 
the enormous military masses of Germany. But this 
under the rule of M. Jaures was no argument, since 
perfect amity prevailed between the Socialists in the 
Reichstag and those in the Chamber, and they would 
not allow of a barbarous breach of such a union. Fi- 
nally the service was curtailed to two years, and the 
reduction was welcomed even more jubilantly by politi- 
cians than by the young men who were benefited by it. 
Meanwhile the effort begun by General Andre to 
bring down the officers to a truly democratic level was 
carried on methodically. In 1907, a decree was pub- 
lished reforming the old order of precedence at official 
ceremonies, and pushing back the commandant of an 
army corps (of which there are only twenty) far behind 
a prefect (of whom there are nearly a hundred). The 
right of punishing for offences in the service was con- 
siderably restricted; the officers' mess-tables were 
suppressed so that officers would be compelled to mix 
more freely with the civilians in garrison towns; the 
old regulations making it imperative that an officer 
should not marry into a family unable to settle a certain 
sum on the wife were abolished, and as the pay re- 
mained ridiculously insufficient, the social background 
of many army men became inferior in consequence. 
All these restrictions tended to hamper or belittle the 
army. Something worse remained to be done, which 
was to lower its spirit. The methods to which M. 
Combes and General Andre resorted will long be remem- 
bered as excesses of which even an Oriental autocracy 
would be ashamed, and they elicited from M. Miller- 
and the famous speech in which he branded the Combes 



Combism and the Army 131 

government as a regime abject. M. Combes was not 
qualmish about methods. He seems to have been the 
inventor of the delegues cantonaux — unofficial repre- 
sentatives of the prefects in every chef -lieu de canton, 
who not only could veto the decisions of municipal 
councils and mayors by reporting them at headquarters, 
but made themselves useful as discreet informants, i.e., 
in plain language, spies. 

This institution was extended by General Andre 
to the army. Scandalous debates in the Chamber, 
coming after the revelations of a clerk, showed to 
the bewildered public that the Minister of War had 
entrusted to the Freemasons the police of the army. 
The Lodge in each garrison town was watching the 
officers, taking note of who went to church, and who did 
not, who went there with his wife — which was venial — 
or went there with a prayer-book — which was unfor- 
givable; who paid his court to M. le Prefet and Madame 
la Prefete, and who kept aloof in evident disrespect 
to the Republic. One military bootmaker in a regi- 
ment was an accomplished spy, and for many months 
practically browbeat all his chiefs. In a few cases, 
officers who were Freemasons demeaned themselves 
lower than outside observers by sheer tale-bearing. 
In a short time there was in the army — which gives up 
the franchise so as not to seem in any way political — 
an abominable distinction between so-called republican 
and non-republican officers, and a feeling of mistrust 
prevailed where comradeship had been for so many 
years the rule. 

The consequence was that the officers who remained 
true to the ideal which had attracted so many of them 
into the army after 1870 felt numberless frictions, 
while the noble trade of soldiering became with many 



132 The Deterioration of France 

others a mere metier. And this metier being underpaid, 
it was natural that they should cast about for remedies 
and pecuniary improvements. There were no other 
means at hand than those used by everybody else, viz., 
agitation and association. We saw the appearance of a 
new military paper, Armee et Democratie, which might 
have been the organ of a syndicate, and in fact its 
creation was promptly followed by ^n agitation with 
a view to the creation of military unions similar to 
the trades unions. 

So, at a moment when the conclusions drawn by 
experts from the Manchurian War all pointed to 
the superiority of character over mere knowledge and 
of a true spirit of discipline and self-denial, Combism 
demoralized the army, made officers dissatisfied with 
their lot, and spread the selfishness of materialism 
through the milieu in which sacrifice had traditionally 
been at home. 

The Navy was as badly treated as the Army. Suffice 
it to recall that its chief was the journalist Pelletan, a 
man whose name is synonymous with reckless levity, 
and who appeared during the too long tenure of his 
office as the worthy compeer of General Andre. He 
had been famous for starting and organizing strikes, 
and it was under his government that the Arsenal 
workers, semi-military as they were, developed the 
unruliness for which they became celebrated. M. 
Pelletan had also ideas of his own concerning the 
composition of the fieet ; their chief result was the pass- 
age of the naval power of France from the second 
rank to the fourth. He did not believe more than 
Andre in the possibility of a war, and the navy maga- 
zines were as empty as those of the army. In 1913, the 
deputy Andre Lefevre, once a Socialist but a true 



Combism and Patriotism 133 

patriot, proved to the Chamber that at the end 
of 1905 there was only ammunition enough for each 
French gun to shoot seven hundred times. One of the 
few frontier towns supposed to defend the Ardennes 
gap — the Httle town of Avesnes which the present 
writer happens to know well — was so destitute of stores 
of all kinds that it took four months and a half of 
strenuous efforts to replenish its magazines. 

The Army during the nightmare of those years was 
not looked upon as the defender of France that all 
the national energies ought to strengthen, but as the 
antagonist of civic society, a champion of belated pre- 
judices, and the enemy of justice, and it was treated 
accordingly. 

16. Combism and Patriotism 

The old patriotic notion which identified the country 
not only with its traditions but with its territorial 
limits ; the pleasure which the student of the history of 
France used to take in her gradual expansion in the 
course of ages ; the accent in which true patriots would, 
like Louis XIV, utter her name, as if it were that of a 
sacred spiritual being — all this had been many times 
ridiculed as limited and almost barbarous. Voltaire in 
the string of questions which he entitled Les Pourquoi 
asked two or three questions which sound like anti- 
patriotism long before the anti-patriots, and the early 
Socialists of course placed themselves above such 
hampering notions. I have explained in a previous 
chapter how the philosophy of Taine and Renan in the 
first part of their lives implied a standpoint irreconcil- 
able with patriotism. But the cynical expression of 
disdain for the attachment to one's country was not to 



134 The Deterioration of France 

be heard until the last years of the nineteenth century 
when it became a sort of elegance. In 1 891, in the ear- 
liest issues of the Mercure de France, the loyalty to 
Alsace-Lorraine was derided or inveighed against. 
Jules Renard wrote that in a short time the war of 
1870 would be considered of less importance than the 
appearance of the Cid, or even of a fable of La Fontaine. 

M. Herold said: "If one were sincere, the confession 
would be general that the treaty of Frankfort is as 
remote as that of Utrecht." The well-known M. 
Remy de Gourmont was more direct, and said that the 
farce of the two sister provinces kneeling at the frontier- 
post had lasted long enough to be unbearable. M. 
Bazalgette said coldly that every cultivated man ought 
to view calmly the idea of seeing his own country 
absorbed by another. 

Such utterances were, it is true, sporadic, and might 
frequently be construed as literary exaggerations which 
it was uncritical to take literally. But a speech which 
had also been printed by the Mercure de France must 
be regarded as formulating a deep and widely spread 
feeling, for it was admirably in keeping with the haughty 
intellectualism which ran high at the end of the nine- 
teenth century. 

I only recognize the value of intelligence [it said] ; it knows 
no frontiers, and I would fain sacrifice the lives of a hundred 
French fools to that of one intelligent man from anywhere. 
The vaunted integrity of the national soil is no concern of 
mine; the little nook where I meditate is enough for me, and 
the territory around it may well be conquered, it will leave 
my thought exactly what it was. 

In 1904, all this had gradually become familiar. The 
Sorbonne was entirely devoted to the scientific methods 



Combism and Patriotism 135 

of Germany, and the reaction produced by this whole- 
sale adoption of literary principles not native was 
certainly weakening for patriotism. It seems almost 
incredible that a professor at the Ecole Normale Supe- 
rieure — a Jew, it is true — M. Frederic Rauh, should 
have conducted a scientific investigation with his pupils 
into the question: "Was patriotism a rational feeling, 
and did it bear the test of psychological analysis?" 
This inquiry resulted in an almost universal negative. 
The expression of patriotism was rejected as mere ver- 
balism, and the sentiment itself was declared to be a 
superstition, or at best an artistic or literary fallacy. 
"Patriots," M. Rauh said, "do not coimt; they are 
purely sentimental. Their doctrine is in fiat contra- 
diction with mine, and I would much rather defend 
internationalism." Yet, the professor saw that this 
conclusion was practically untenable, and introducing a 
distinction into it he declared that to stave off major 
evils a man might obey the military law, no matter 
how unjust. Besides, a country like France being the 
apostle of Internationalism, one could reasonably wish 
and work for its continuation lest the doctrine of Inter- 
nationalism itself should suffer from its absorption 
into less philosophical empires. 

There were no protests at the time, not even from 
the students, hundreds of whom must have heard of this 
doctrine while week after week it was publicly dis- 
cussed. The Sorbonne of those days was a hotbed of 
the most uncompromising Dreyfusism. Professors like 
M. Seignobos, M. Langlois, M. Andler, and above all 
M. Monod were so Germanized in their thoughts and 
teaching that it was difficult for their hearers to get at 
what might be left of sentiment under their scientific 
principles, and Germany acted once more as the magnet 



136 The Deterioration of France 

it had been towards the middle of the nineteenth 
century. 

It is needless to say that the Combes government 
took special pleasure in showing itself above aged 
prejudices. The presence in the Cabinet of M. Del- 
casse, whom all Europe, except France, knew to be 
planning the isolation of Germany, would occasionally 
elicit criticism from the very sensitive German press, 
but M. Delcasse was nothing to M. Jaures, and the 
latter gave complete satisfaction to the enemies of his 
country. Whenever there was the least cause of 
friction between the two governments he was seen in 
the tribune, explaining warmly that the fault was 
entirely with the French Foreign Office. He spoke in 
German at German congresses, constantly referred to 
the point of view of the German "comrades," and 
certainly was more popular on the other side of the 
Rhine than even Bebel, who was only appreciated by 
his party. I said before that on several occasions the 
Internationale was sung at official ceremonies instead of 
the Marseillaise, and the Prime Minister did not protest 
against the presence of the Socialist red flag. 

The favour of the Ministers of Education went 
to the teaching recommended by M. Jaures and his 
friends. It was scientific; that is to say, atheistic 
under cover of the other epithet ; and rational, that 
is to say, frankly anti-patriotic. The history of France 
until 1789 was ignored. French children under the 
pretence that they ought not to have their memories 
crowded with bloody battles, useless dates, and dry 
treaties, knew nothing of the epic of their country. 
But they were carefully informed of all the details in the 
history of the Revolution and its consequences, that 
would make them realize how nations are less antagon- 



Combism and National Culture 137 

istic to one another than classes. Jeanne d'Arc was left 
out as a barbarous worrier, but the Communists were 
extolled. 

Nothing can show so much both the hold which 
internationalist doctrines had taken of distinguished 
intellects and their popularity than the success which, 
as late as 1907 — two years after the fall of Combes — 
welcomed the famous book of M. Anatole France, 
Vile des Pingouins. This was a caricature of the 
history of France conceived in the coarsest materialistic 
point of view of the Socialists, but drawn in the vein 
now of Rabelais and now of Voltaire, and deceiving the 
unguarded reader about its essential vulgarity by its 
cleverness. That a writer of M. France's distinction 
should have taken such a subject and handled it as if 
he had dealt with the Papimanes, showed to what 
extent the certitude of peace, the cosmic point of view, 
and the disdain of sentimental superstitions had trans- 
formed the country not only of Jeanne d'Arc but of the 
Revolutionary volunteers of 1792, and even of Michelet, 
humanitarian as he was. 

17. Combism and National Culture 

The catastrophe of 1870, and the diminished political 
influence which followed it, had left untouched the 
spiritual Empire of France, i.e., the radiating intelli- 
gence for which she had been famous since the days of 
Brunetto Latini. It belonged to the destructive spirit 
of M. Combes's government to bring even that into 
jeopardy. 

It is true that the classical culture on which French 
literature was built in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and 
eighteenth centuries had been weakened long before the 



138 The Deterioration of France 

advent of M. Combes and his Socialists, but it had been 
through imprudent zeal, not through enmity. Latin, 
and especially Greek, had gradually seemed austere to 
modern generations rendered anaemic by the newspaper 
and the novel, and an attempt had been made to teach 
them through pleasant easy methods. It was not 
necessary, the reformers argued, to take all the trouble 
necessary for learning how to speak or even write the 
classical languages ; it was enough if one could read their 
best monuments. Consequently composition in Greek 
prose and verse, and translations into the same language 
were discarded, and in a decade or two the very estim- 
able school of French Hellenists which had risen be- 
tween the restoration of Greek studies — towards 18 10 — 
and 1850 was left where it was, and mostly employed in 
preparing a vast collection of cribs which the next 
generation was to use in default of personal knowledge. 
Latin was not treated in the same manner; verses and 
compositions were kept up until about 1880, but the 
same results followed. French professors in those days 
were seldom travelled men, and seldom knew anything 
of modern languages. So personal experience could not 
teach them what a thorough study of the classic tongues 
had taught their elders, viz., that no language is ever 
mastered unless one aims at possessing it like a native. 
The consequence was that the ancient texts were taught 
and remembered like difficult music, which, the mo- 
ment the boy was released from school, vanished from his 
memory. The idea that one was learning the classical 
languages disappeared and was replaced by that of 
being exercised in them, a nuance which school slang 
admirably expresses in the familiar phrases, faire du 
Latin, faire du Grec. On the whole few people, except 
specialists, knew Latin well, and hardly anybody had 



Combism and National Culture 139 

more than the poorest smattering of Greek. Gradually 
pupils came to doubt the knowledge of their masters, 
the conclusion that if nobody knew them it was because 
they were impossible to master became general if sel- 
dom positively stated, and boys, parents, and even 
masters had an uncomfortable feeling that six or seven 
years were wasted over things which nobody could 
honestly say he had succeeded in learning. 

So at last the reproach of uselessness and — less 
definitely — that of being demoralizing were made 
against what was called the traditional teaching, which 
in fact was nothing more than the mistake of one or two 
generations, when the great commercial and industrial 
expansion universal in the last twenty years of the nine- 
teenth century became noticeable in France. Immedi- 
ately over-logical intellects and people endowed with the 
superficial common-sense which is the modern form 
of wisdom, declared that young Frenchmen were unpre- 
pared for this kind of opportunity. They had no 
scientific preparation, and they did not know modern 
languages; all their education had to be made over 
again, and, while they did this, luckier competitors fore- 
stalled them everywhere. This was the time when M. 
Demolins published La Superiorite des Anglo-Saxons^ 
and when M. Jules Lemattre, untrue to himself, threw 
the classical education overboard without ceremony. 

It was a singular oversight to forget that the French 
of the eighteenth century, trained exclusively in the 
classics, had been remarkable colonizers and successful 
merchants. It was even more inexplicable that French 
writers should complain of lack of scientific preparation 
in a city possessing those two unrivalled schools of 
engineers: the Ecole Poly technique and the Ecole Cen- 
trale. They did not see that if, in spite of the compara- 



140 The Deterioration of France 

tive neglect of scientific formation in educational 
methods, the French easily became successful mer- 
chants and good engineers, it must be because their 
culture — whatever it might be — at all events prepared 
them for specialization. This all-important considera- 
tion was overlooked, and people began to cry for a 
more practical syllabus in schools. 

However, there was no treason in this, and the rights 
of a superior culture were carefully reserved even by the 
most strenuous advocates of utilitarian education. It 
was in a very different spirit that the Socialist politi- 
cians, unexpectedly abetted by so-called intellectual 
democrats at the Sorbonne, took in hand what they 
naturally called the truly republican reform of 
education. 

In reality, this would-be reform was nothing else than 
an envious insurrection of the lower tendencies of the 
democracy against culture pure and simple. The 
Socialists and Radicals were the representatives of 
classes which could not aspire to the education so far 
identified with the classics, and they contended that as 
everybody could not be given such an education, it 
should not be given to anyone. Through all the cam- 
paign which they made against classical education, one 
could follow this strange principle in all its crudeness. 
The effort of past generations had been towards mak- 
ing people equal by raising the lower ranks ; it was to this 
policy that we owed men like Amyot, Rollin, or Diderot, 
not to speak of more than one, J. J. Weiss, in recent 
times. But the notion of mere anarchists could not 
but be different and even contrary; order seemed more 
difficult than levelling, and levelling in consequence 
became the object. It is only fair to say that M. 
Jaur^s, who was a scholar, did not share these views, 



Combism and National Culture 141 

but he was the kind of chief who follows his adherents, 
and his influence availed little in this instance. 

There was surprise at the reviving of an old argu- 
ment, which could pass as an argument only at an 
exceptionally stupid epoch. 

The official representatives of the new education [wrote a 
Sorbonne professor] have long maintained that Latin ought 
to be ostracized, and that its banishment must be the work 
of the Republic. There is between the Latin tongue and 
the Church too intimate a bond — in fact, a sort of filial 
relation. The Humanities viewed as they were in the old 
school, and old-fashioned in their very object and method, 
are nothing else than the course of studies which the Jesuits 
once freed from scholasticism for the use of society people. 
In fact, modern education is only the last word of secu- 
larisation. 

This Sorbonne professor was no other than M. Ferdi- 
nand Brunot, a grammarian and lexicographer of world- 
wide repute, and it must have taken all the bigotry of 
the time to blind such a man to the sordidness of the 
thought he defended. 

But the Sorbonne, with the exception of M. Faguet 
and a few others, was beneath its traditional r61e in this 
emergency. Most of its professors were silent, or if 
they spoke up it was for the new fad. M. Lanson was 
among the first who viewed the institution in which he 
taught, not as an instrument of culture but as a place 
for the production of positive erudition. He spoke of 
his class as a scientific atelier, in which young men 
worked tinder his guidance for results similar to those 
obtained at the German universities. Most of the pro- 
fessors of history did the same, and the word seminar 
was used by them in its German sense. A lad fresh 



142 'I Ik- I )ctcrionition of I'niiicc 

from sdiool, riiul only Ix'^Miininj^ to Iciini how lo learn, 
would bo sL'irted on rcsca relics the final outcome of 
which was little hetter than a catalogue, useful no 
(loul)t for more advanced scholars who mi^ht need its 
information, but certainly not so useful for its author, 
only the year before a mere schoolboy, with the school- 
boy's incrc>dil)le gai)S and crudencvSS. 

i>ittl(> by little the new theories, the ni>w spirit, and 
the new hatn^d;; p.c.'U'd into lcM!;islation. in 1902, the 
old coiH'Sc of studies was replaced by a, cinnplctcly 
(lilTerent oni>, the chief fcatiux; of which was a (juadruple 
subdivision makinj^ ivatin and (h'eek optional, while 
sciences and modern lanjj;ua|ies never were, and en- 
abling a boy to bccoitu' a, hdclir/icr, even if he had never 
been inside a, lyurc, and only knew the tuition given in 
tlu' higher schools of the i^lcmcnt.ary degree. This 
was levelhng without any shame, and the measure was 
only well reccvivtHl where jealousy is a. principle. Shortly 
after a reform of the* lircHrc —Iho degi^ee generally taken 
after two years at a university and qualifying its 
possessor for teaching — made it possible for a young 
man (o b(.>cM)me a profes.sor of hist(My or ])hilosophy not 
only without any knowlinlgc of Latin or ( nvek, but even 
without having ever bccMi properly tt'sted in P^-ench 
comj)osition. This was the new culture. Almost at 
the same tinu* llu^ /uv/c Normalc Siip/'riciirc was modi- 
fied to an c^\t(Mit an)ounting to suppression. It iiad 
been a, famous, one may say a uuicjui^ seminary of 
the most, n^liuc^l i-ultmv, btit that was exactly what 
drew upon it (he animadversion of people impatient of 
any kind of distinction. TIumc* ought t.o be no Slite in 
a democracy. 

This was the work of Combism with regard to 
education. All the outcry for light, all the promise 



The Blindness of Combism 143 

of ai) intellectual traininj^ for l,hf; (.-liildnin fjf the demo- 
cracy resulted in d':,1,ni' l.ion .-i.ihI in the n)onf>tony of 
inferiority. In two or three y(!ars the praetieal results 
of this ef^uali/jng a,ppearefl, and thf;y were deplorable; 
young men trained, after the new ir)f:thf>ds might know a 
little more than their elders, Ijut they were unprepared 
in a woeful degree for lenrninj^ hi;4)er things, and often 
discouraged their chief or e)iip!f;y(;r:; l^y tlie un-French 
slowness of their minds in seeing the logical concatena- 
tion of ide,'i,:;. Strange to relate, the protest, which 
h.'i-d not eonie IVorn Sorbonne professors, came promptly 
enough from scientists, j^hysieinns, or engineers, and, as 
we shall see, was more productive of effects than awk- 
ward explanations given by j^rofessionals. 

18. The Blindness of Combism 

The sjjirit v/ln'eh the ;;(-:ie,nee, jjhilosojjhy, and litera- 
ture of tlie S' 'Oil') ICiripire h-'u] elabornted for a danger- 
ous elile w.'i,:; let loose by the Third I'ejjiiblic, and ranged 
fn;(;ly thron;^!) the eonntry, while; .selfish anrl inadequate 
parliaments enj^rossed by the-ir petty interests forgot 
that patriotism means attention to the position of one's 
country as influenced by that of its n(;ighbours. What 
the K^ejjublieans did from levity until JH98, the Drey- 
fusists and Combists did out of pervf-rseness during 
the; seven years that followed. They j^nshed the 
Revolutionary principles to their utmost eonseciuences 
and revelled in the destruction they witnessed. 1'he 
humiliation of rn-'ijo'strates, the persecution of officers, 
the banishmc.'nt of j^riests and nuns, all this acted upon 
them as it might on the crudest village jJohtician. It 
satisfied their hatred, and their intelligence cared little 
whether it had not terrible effects upon the country. 



144 The Dctcrionition oi Franco 

Til 11)04, M. Combos foil undor Iho woighlol" uiiivorsal 
oontoiiipt. Tho rcvolatioiis ooncorniiii;- Iho ospionai^c 
in tho army hail siokonod ovon (ho loast smioamisli, ami 
thoro was i^onoral roliof whon, in U)i>4, M. Clomonooau 
litorally kiokod tho Promior out of ollioo in tho most dis- 
dainful article he had ever written. But the loss of their 
servant or valot produced little effect upon the Social- 
ists and Radicals. They went on doing, under M. 
Rouvier, the work they had undertaken five years 
before. At tho boi;innini; o{ 1905, they were immersed 
in tho joy of preparing tho final defeat of the Church by 
the Separation Law, and fhoy did not give a thought 
to the state of affairs bo>ond tho frontiers. Never 
had the belief in the fraternit>- oi nations been more 
general. M. Jaur(^s, who was only a ranter of course, 
boliovod in it, but M. Li:on Bourgeois, whom Europe 
regarded for fiftoon years as a man of rare intelligence, 
believed in it too. Nobody romomborod that individ- 
uals had duties, but the duties of peoples were the sub- 
ject of endless philosophizing with men so ignorant of 
history as not to know that nations always see their 
duty in their immediate interest. Tho realities of 
European politics were limited with most politicians to 
the system of agreements patiently knit b>' M. Delcass6, 
and this view was perhaps a worse delusion than plain 
humanitarianism. France wanted no war, of course, 
they said to themselves, seeing that every year she 
decreased her militar}' expenditure; and no nation, 
however unreasonabh' inimical, could dream of making 
war against her with such a protecting chain of alliances 
or amities round her frontiers. Thoro was therefore no 
cause for anxiety, and Franco had only to go on mind- 
ing her own particular mission, which was to look after 
tlie interests of mankind. 



The Blindness of Combism 145 

Meanwhile M. Delcass6 carricfl on hi:; effort, patriotic 
indeed, but in a less egotistical person, an effort likely 
to be accompanicfl with tremors. While everybody 
else was speaking of [jeace, whik; the Ministers of War 
and of the Navy proceeded with the disarmament, M. 
D(;lcass6 was preparing war, and he knew it; and he 
knew that Germany knew it. While politicians dis- 
claimed every Imj)erial ambition, there was a French 
army on the frontier of Morocco which meant nothing 
if it was not territorial expansion, and Germany fol- 
lowed the xjrogress of this army with increasing jealousy. 

One man, indeed, the n(;w Premier, M. Rouvier, a 
financier with the financier's rather near-sighted judg- 
ment, partly realized the state of affairs. He was early 
informed that M. Delcasse's plans could only result 
in trouble, but he thought the situation might be made 
less dangerous by quietly dealing with it, by giving 
assurances to the German Ambassador and possibly to 
the German financiers. It never occurred to him that 
the real solution was to warn F'rance, or at least the 
Parliament, of their danger. He could easily have done 
it. The year before one of the best vStaff officers in the 
army, General de Negrier, had sent in his resignation 
because, as he put it, "the Eastern frontier was sup- 
posed to be protected, and in reahty was not." It 
belonged to the head of government to bring home 
to the Chamber the truth which this frank declaration 
of a true soldier held in so concise a form. The effect no 
doubt would have l-jcen immediate. But M. Rouvier 
would rather leave the Chamber to its enjoyment of 
the famous Article 4 in the vSeparation Law, and the 
country to its ignorances or passions. At all events the 
crisis came like a thunderbolt. On the last day of March, 
1905, the Kaiser unexpectedly landed at Tangier, and 



I4f^> 1 lu' 1 )i1rri(>i.ili(>n o{ I'laiui* 

doIiviMxnl i\ siuhhIi in whit-li hr iltH-hiiril llial Ihc Sullati 
of M(M-(H\Hi was m Ins oy»\'; an iiuK^iumuKmU scn'iTiMj^n, 
anJ M(M(v\-o a routidy »>iHMi to all nations witlunit any 
tuoitopoly or aiim^xation. "My visit," Iho tnt)tKni"h 
idKlcJ, "is the ttH'»>j;niti(>n ol this iinlrpnuUMiro. " 

V\\c wrecks that tollowril wno thr incst r\rntlnl 
in thr histoiy ot" Ihi^ Thinl Roiniblii'. 'I'ho Kdisor 
oinphasi/inl thi^ tnoaniiiv; ot" Iho 'raii};ior tloinonst ration 
l>y rotnini; to Mci:. (ov [\\c inanj;uraliiM\ of a nionnniont.. 
A i'^cnrh mission, i\>nsislin); «>!' i^xci^plioiially tUstin- 
j;uislu\l otVuHMS, ha\i»\); hccw sont to Hoilinon the occa- 
sion ol" the Kronprin/.'s inarria)U\ tho wi^lconio which was 
given lo these t^lVicers slu>wcvl ati »>hvious ii\(ent.ion 
of discriminatinv; 1hMwi\mi them aiul their ini;;sion. 
'^rineats were in tlu^ air. 

it was thiMi that the historii-al liispateh siMit by 
(hi> l'a\);hsh h\Meii;n (>t"liei^ to the I'^reneh ( lOVtMiiincMit. 
intrtHhiecil inti> (he situalii>n a new eletnent, the itnport- 
i\ucc ol" which ciMiUl not be i>\a};)',iaati\l. "The l'a\j;lish 
t io\enunei>t ," this ilocuniiMit .simply sai^i. was reaily 
to examine "tlu^ basis oi an ai;riHM\UMit liki^l\' lo protect, 
the tnutnal it\terests ot" lu\i;lanil anil h^ance ii\ case they 
shonUl be et\(,lanj:ered." 

'I'his ti>U\iMani. thrvnii'ji some mysterimis indis- 
ctvtion, was known at InMlin tln^ day after its receipt, 
atul imtnediatcly the (one o( the tuM-tnaii papers rose 
to ani;er. They opetily saivl that I-'ratuv must bo the 
hostas;e o\' ICni^land; let any threatening; move on the 
part o( (he ICns^lish licet be madi^ in (he iiirec(ion of 
the Baltic, and a ("icrman army should immediately 
bo sont to Naticy. Some people have said tha( M. 
lVlcass6 was for mobilizinj; at oikw Hu( (his was (he 
impulse of a man who. havitis; ilone his bes(, had 
omitted to ascertain whedicr his neighbours worc ;ilso 



The Blindness of Combism 147 

doing their flut,y. A war in the then condition of 
France, with the magazines empty, the army demoral- 
ized by the Drcyfustst persecution, and th(; country 
divided and t?i,kcn aback, was an impossible absurdity. 
M. Delcass6 was made to understand it. On June 6, 
1905, the news of his rcsi^^nation appeared in the papers, 
and it was sf;on rumoured that the removal of the 
man, who for seven years had been the rej^resentative 
of France before Europe, was the sacrifice demanded 
by Germany in a tone which left only onf; alternative. 

This, then, was the result of thirty-five years of 
a refiime which haxl been supposed to have for its 
constant object to wash away the memory of 1870. 
An "unprecedented humiliation," as M. Clemenceau, 
then Prime Minister, called it four years later in the 
Chamber- — forced upon the Icjast attentive Uut dete- 
rif>ratir>n whif:fi France, slowly at first, with awful rapid- 
ity since 1898, had undergone. Under pretence of 
being modern, civilized, and philosophical, the leaders 
of the country had enervated and blinded it; under 
pretence of being for peace they had made it incapable 
of protecting by arms the record of its historical honour. 

Everybody felt thr-it thi:; degradation ought not to be 
f;harged on France. In the minds of all observers here 
and abroad the people responsible for it were the semi- 
anonymous crew to which I have just referred and the 
history of which has almost filled this book so far. 
l^hcy, as common parlarK;e almost invariably designates 
them, were the crirnin,'i,ls. And they were not so much 
criminals as th(^y were vulgarians with inferior morals 
and an inferior intelligence. The mistake of the good 
men who i)ieced together the Constitutional laws of 
1875 had made their deplorable rule possible. It was 
inevitable that an Assembly of unguided democrats 



148 The Deterioration of France 

should think of its own shabby interests, and that such 
an Assembly, enjoying a practically unbalanced power, 
should make a dangerous use of it. Being individual- 
istic, that is to say selfish, they could only act selfishly 
and diffuse selfishness and the stupidity of selfishness 
about them. Let them, with such a disposition, 
attempt or suffer one of them to attempt a rdle in the 
intricate politics of the world, and the ridiculous impos- 
sibility of being wise, strong, and persevering beyond the 
frontiers while being the very reverse at home was sure 
to appear, at the risk of tragic consequences. The 
lesson of the history of the Third Republic is nothing 
else than the trite lesson of all history, viz., that nothing 
matters so much to a country as a good government. 



PART II 
THE RETURN OF THE LIGHT 

SECTION I. — IMMEDIATE CONSEQUENCES OF THE 
TANGIER INCIDENT 

SECTION II. — INTELLECTUAL PREPARATION OF THE 
NEW SPIRIT 

SECTION III. — EVIDENCES OF THE NEW SPIRIT 

(a) Instinctive Manifestations of the New Spirit 

(6) More Conscious Manifestations of the New Spirit 



149 



INTRODUCTORY 

The Tangier affair was a flash of lightning, after which 
the clouds lifted. It was one of those events which 
rapidly destroy a whole system of thought, or, at any 
rate, throw into the shade the protagonists who only a 
short time before seemed alone to hold the field, mean- 
while liberating another system until then unnoticed 
or disregarded. What has been called the regeneration 
or even the resurrection of France dated from that 
shock. 

The admixture of materiaHsm, veiled cowardice, 
and self-delusion which had caused the deterioration 
of the public spirit, and emphasized the political losses 
of France, suddenly appeared in its ugliness; a silence 
followed; and when it was broken, the men who had 
been the oracles of the people for two generations found 
they had lost this position; they felt that all they could 
do was to let some of them sneer and scoff, but they 
were unable to prevent better men than themselves — 
the elite of the country, in fact — from speaking thoughts 
which either the catastrophe of 1870, or the excesses of 
thought, speech, and misrule since then committed 
had planted and ripened in them. 

So it turned out that while the fear of being con- 
quered — rather than the fear of going to war — caused 
in the less reflective portion of the nation the reaction 
of surprise, anger, and gradually determination natural 

151 



152 The Return of the Light 

to a courageous people, the thinkers who had a right to 
the intellectual leadership of their fellow-countrymen 
had an unexpected opportunity for making themselves 
heard. And when they did speak, or when popular 
exponents began to retail their ideas, these were found 
to be nothing more nor less than the long-forgotten 
ancestral wisdom. One may say without any fear of 
contradiction that French voices had not sounded so 
French since the troubled times of the sixteenth century. 

Politicians may take advantage of a bad constitution 
to come back to the charge, as they have done several 
times already, they may even secure power and use it 
against their own country, but nothing can undo 
what was done after Tangier in 1905 and again after 
Agadir in 191 1. French ideas are in the air, at present, 
instead of internationalist doctrines, and the name of 
France, which the governments immediately preceding 
the Tangier affair were ashamed to utter in the accents 
of patriotism, is now constantly on the lips even of the 
Socialist deputy and the Syndicalist workman. This 
much is a positive gain; the reintegration of France as 
a directing idea of the French nation after the long 
intellectual wandering of the nineteenth century can- 
not be a transient phenomenon. 

The following chapters will be an expose of the 
fortunate consequences of the Tangier incident, and 
of the national spirit to which it gave birth, both among 
the simple and among those more capable of rational 
consciousness. 



SECTION I 

IMMEDIATE CONSEQUENCES OF THE TANGIER 
INCIDENT 

I. The Lifting of the Veil 

It is a favourite theory that the French generally 
act in what Julius Caesar calls the tumultus of their 
ancestors, the Gauls. As a matter of fact, their history 
is more one of upheavals than one of even progress. 
Yet it is also a fact that they are apt to play a long time 
with ideas before making up their minds about them, 
and that when poHtics are placed between ideas and in- 
tellectual vision they are slower than many other peoples 
to see where their interest immediately lies. This may 
account for the fact that although the Tangier incident 
came as a shock and its illumination was sudden, it was 
not accompanied by any panic. The country, it must be 
said, had very different interests from those in which it 
has been absorbed since; it cared little for the Moroccan 
conquest, about which neither the Foreign Minister nor 
the press would enHghten it; and, on the contrary, it 
followed the debates on the Separation Law with 
passionate curiosity. So when the papers narrated the 
arrival of the Kaiser's ship off Tangier, and gave the 
text of his address after landing, people were slow to 
understand. First of all, it had been settled once for 

153 



154 The Return of the Light 

all during the preceding years that the world was now 
too civilized to harbour the idea of a war, and such a 
comfortable notion is one which survives its causes as 
the optimism of the gambler, and even the hopeful 
sensation he had before being undone, survive his ruin. 
Then, few people realized that Tangier and inaccessible 
Fez and the rocky valleys of Morocco were of any 
interest to France, so that the significance of the 
Emperor's step was almost lost upon them. It was 
only when the papers began to say that M. Rouvier, 
the Prime Minister, had constant conferences with the 
German Ambassador, and, above all, when M. Delcasse 
vanished from the Cabinet at a few hours' notice, that 
the name War appeared in lurid letters upon the 
horizon. 

Then the veil was indeed lifted, and the French 
had a clear view of the situation. The universal feel- 
ing was the consciousness of an immense absurdity. 
Pacifism had been a ridiculous farce. Because modem 
people, too nervous to think of blood, had chosen to 
think of commerce and money instead, because a few 
dozen Socialists in France and Germany had bragged 
that no fratricidal duel would henceforward be suffered 
where they had their word to say; because M. Leon 
Bourgeois had been admired at a Congress of the Peace, 
and M. d'Estournelles de Constant meditated writing 
a crushing letter to the first monarch who should call his 
people to the flag, war had been regarded as an impos- 
sibility. But war at present was near at hand all the 
same. It mattered little that France had not wished for 
it, never given a thought to it — there it was. One ship, 
half pleasure-boat, half ironclad, one man in a helmet 
not only meant it, but also meant the preposterousness 
of planning any resistance. Behind the yacht there 



The Lifting of the Veil 155 

were scores of men-of-war built in a few years' time, 
according to a single plan carried out by the same 
men, and provided with every modern improvement; 
behind the Monarch in a helmet there were all the 
German nations, with their unique military training, 
their millions of men, and their formidable armament. 
How childishly foolish the anti-militarist doctrines 
appeared! what a lout seemed the country doctor, 
Combes, with his belief in Jaures and the peasantry 
craft which he could only use in jockeying combina- 
tions! what puppets General Andre and the journalist 
Admiral Pelletan must have been! If the French 
arsenals were empty, if the French officers were de- 
moralized by espionage and petty molestations; if the 
army had been persuaded that it had every object 
except war, it was because those extraordinary leaders 
had been taken in by shallow paradoxes of which many 
a plain farmer glancing at the newspaper had seen at 
once the futility. 

Syndicalism had long been a bugbear, and, as is too 
often the case with frightening objects, it had been 
regarded as an unavoidable development. Now, in 
the feeling of imiversal disillusionment which gained 
the workman as well as the bourgeois, it became merely 
irritating. During two or three years, as we shall see, 
Syndicalism was to prove to the world that it might 
checkmate the Chamber itself, but even this would not 
restore its formidable magnetism. It would only be 
another evidence of the essential weakness of the 
Chamber. 

As to the religious quarrels over which so much 
time and energy, so much that might have been useful 
to all the commonwealth, had been wasted, they 
appeared in their true light, as academic disputes which 



156 The Return of the Light 

the stupid hatred of the anti-clericals had embittered 
to the point of making one of the parties forget every 
idea of justice. 

On the whole, a few months after the Tangier affair 
there were not many Frenchmen whose outlook had not 
been deeply modified. To most of them it had been 
brought home that every individual, whether he likes it 
or not, is tied by vital bonds, not to abstractions, but to 
a territory, and that indifference to the fortunes of this 
territory is unnatural and foolish, and must sooner or 
later be paid for by humiliation or anxiety. 

2. Awakening of the Instinct of Self-Preservation 

The success of the Republicans in the decisive elec- 
tion of 1876 had for its principal cause a vague but 
universal feeling which acted powerfully upon the 
electorate. This was the hope that the new regime 
might make of the welfare of the community the con- 
cern of all the citizens. The wish to be an active ele- 
ment in society, to be more than a mere looker-on, not 
to seem to presume by taking a positive interest in the 
affairs of one's country, and to help in promoting their 
proper settlement is the pathetic side of the demo- 
cracies ; it is also their chief motive power. 

The failure of the Third Republic to do more than 
artificially keep up this feeling must be one of the chief 
grievances of the social historian against it. This 
bourgeois democracy will always be regarded as a fraud. 
From the very first — that is to say, from the moment 
the constitution of 1875 gave them an easy means of 
exploiting their compatriots, these unscrupulous people 
duped them. They went on repeating to them at each 
election that they were the real masters of their de- 



Instinct of Self-Preservation 157 

stinies, but taking every precaution lest the so-called 
masters should have a single clear issue placed before 
them on which they could pronounce. The effect of this 
policy was certain. The electors, interested at first, 
became gradually indifferent to politics which they not 
only did not sway, but hardly ever understood, and 
settled into the apathy which has been the character- 
istic of the Third Republic. So that the only people 
who were attentive to the public affairs were for years 
the very wide-awake politicians in the Chamber from 
selfish motives, and later on that section of the working- 
classes which came to consciousness through Syndicalist 
propagandism. In the main, the chief object the nation 
had had in welcoming the Republic thus appeared 
nullified. 

What the development of the Republican institutions 
had not done, the Tangier incident did in a few weeks. 
Once more the French recovered that freshness of 
citizenship, that unanimity of feeling and purpose which 
have impelled them to action at all the great moments 
of their history: the Communist movement, the Cru- 
sades, the Revolution, the great wars of 1792, and the 
first wars of the Empire. 

The threats of Germany might indeed have been 
traced to causes which ought to leave the lower classes 
indifferent : the dissatisfaction of a few bankers or ship- 
owners, the Imperialist ambitions of some university 
professors, the jingoism of the Prussian officers, etc.; 
but these considerations, if they were put forward, 
could not outweigh the natural impulse of patriotism in 
its most elemental form, self-preservation. From high 
to low the French felt that they were threatened with a 
foreign domination, and the most unbearable foreign 
domination they could imagine ; it was enough to revive 



158 The Return of the Light 

in them the passionate interest in their State which 
used to possess their ancestors, and to give them 
the ennobling consciousness of particijiating in its de- 
fence, if not in its government. In truth, it is on the 
memory of those moments that France has Hved ever 
since, and her fountain of new energy rose when she 
rcaHzed the significance of the Kaiser's demonstration 
in Morocco. 

After Tangier the feeling gave birth to a feverish 
desire for being ready soon, whatever the cost might be; 
after Agadir — that is to say, six years later — circum- 
stances having changed, the army being in perfect 
training, the arsenals full, and the French artillery 
showing a decided superiority over that of Germany, 
the reaction was even more resolute. For the first 
time since the brilliant and imprudent days of the 
Second Empire, the whole French nation waited im- 
patiently for a declaration of war. The suspense lasted 
only a fortnight, but it had been the suspense of courage 
and wounded pride, and no longer that of nervous 
incertitude, and after that fortnight the French were 
not the same. Not only the vague formula) clothing 
vaguer hopes with which they had been amused so long 
were forgotten, but the ghost of 1870 — that slowly- 
growing fear of Germany which materialism in the guise 
of Pacifism had increased — had been laid at last. I 
know that a sentimental impetus is only too quickly 
spent, and I have seen people imagine that this one 
would be like every other. But the events have shown 
that there must have been in the Tangier and Agadir 
commotions something that was of another, higher, 
and more endurable order. The French may be as 
indifferent to mere politics as they were beforehand, 
but their attitude the moment a truly patriotic interest 



Revival of the Military Spirit 159 

is at stake proves that they have regained their fulness 
of civic consciousness on a few vital points. The way 
in which the immense majority of the nation welcomed 
the Three Year Law and the financial measures attend- 
ing it had the calmness accompanying a rational 
oj)eration, and not the excitement inherent in purely 
instinctive impulses. 

3. Revival of the Military Spirit 

It is almost a tautology to say that the feeling of self- 
preservation promptly gave rise to a revival of the 
military spirit. All the effort of the French since 1905 
has had the army for its object. And the common good 
sense of the people did not beat about the bush for the 
means of defending France at a minimum of sacrifice; 
it went straight to the only practical method. Those 
were the days when Jaurcis, in endless speeches and 
writings, would explain that the best army was not an 
army at all, but the whole nation in arms on any men- 
ace against its independence. So-called serious peox)le, 
inured to absurdities by the ocean of paradoxes on 
which France had drifted since 1899, lent the new gen- 
eral an attentive car, but they gazed in severe doubtful- 
ness at the real soldiers who took the trouble to explain 
that all these fine theories were not theories at all, 
but dreams which might look well only in Michclet's 
or Victor Hugo's pages; soldiers were under a ban and 
supposed to know less than anybody else about every- 
thing, including tactics. 

The bulk of the nation were not long in scouting this 
moonshine. An army was a military concern, and 
civilians knew nothing about it; the more military it 
was, the better. The eastern frontier ought to be jjro- 



i6o The Return of the Light 

tected at all times by a thick line of regiments ready to 
march, and the defence of that most important approach 
was not, on any account, to depend on the uncertain 
arrival of reserves. Garrison towns like Toul, Lune- 
ville, Verdun, and the lonely forts in their vicinity, — 
places the very names of which used to sound disagree- 
ably in the ears of the recruits, — became in great de- 
mand.' The yearly manoeuvres, which reservists had 
formerly been glad to shirk, were accepted as treats. 
The officers who commanded those of 1905 are unani- 
mous in their statements that the men were as different 
from themselves as if twenty years had intervened; 
the proportion of reservists on the sick list was wonder- 
fully small. The technical conclusions of the Manchu- 
rian war had just begun to be widely circulated, and it 
seemed as if the soldiers were as ready to understand 
them as their officers; they could be summed up in the 
superiority of offensive over defensive tactics, and in 
the necessity of giving the men habits of decision and 
initiative. Nothing, of course, would be better in 
keeping with the military tradition of the French, 
and the principles at which officers arrived were acted 
upon immediately. Many observers must have been 
surprised at noticing the change in the men's impres- 
sions concerning their officers. They used to be con- 
fined to trivial or merely funny remarks about their 
personal disposition and its effects upon daily barrack 
life. Now the soldiers would discuss their chiefs 
entirely from the professional point of view, and in 
most cases their appreciations applied wonderfully to 

' The present writer knew personally a lad of twenty, a poor college 
servant, who insisted on undergoing an operation, lest he should not 
serve his time, and appUed for one of the Lorraine garrison towns instead 
of staying in or near Paris, as he could easily have done. 



Revival of the Military Spirit i6i 

the military — not parade-ground — value of the officers. 
Once more the army was what it purports to be on the 
first line of the booklet known as the Theorie Militaire, 
viz., a school for war, and not, as the Dreyfusists would 
have had it, for peace. 

It is remarkable, also, that the development of avia- 
tion, which almost coincided with this change, was 
never regarded from the scientific or sportsman's point 
of view, but was viewed through its military possibili- 
ties. The naive statements of Vedrines — possibly the 
best representative of his craft — which caused so much 
sympathetic amusement in England, corresponded to 
a universal feeling. 

Meanwhile the success of General d'Amade and 
General Lyautey in Morocco effaced what traces of 
ill-will against staff officers might have been left after 
the Dreyfus affair. Both were typical French soldiers: 
brave, dashing, and brilliant, persevering, flexible, and 
good-humoured, but, above all, intelligent, making the 
most of every opportunity — in their own interest, no 
doubt, for they are ambitious, but, above all, for the 
success of their mission. These are qualities which will 
always win popularity in France. It was in vain that 
Jaures and his party cried out against the folly of 
colonial enterprises, and proved with long columns of 
figures that the Moroccan campaign cost enormous 
sums of money which might have been better employed 
elsewhere; the country, as a rule so sensitive to argu- 
ments of this kind, hardly listened. The general feeling, 
which went on gathering strength as the years passed, 
was evidently that France is rich enough to pay for her 
glory. 

Gradually the army, which had almost been com- 
pelled to hide itself, and seemed to be merely on 



i62 The Return of the Light 

sufferance in a country which had outrun every other 
in anti-mihtarist so-called civilization, was pushed 
again to the forefront, and when one of its most popular 
manifestations, the "retreat," or Saturday night pa- 
trolling with the bands, was revived, it was nothing 
short of a triumph. 

But nothing can give a better idea of the return of 
France to her traditional military spirit than the 
changed tone of the politicians when they speak of the 
army. General Andre, during the long four years in 
which he was Minister of War, would warm over the 
"nation in arms," but he always spoke of officers in a 
tone unpleasantly near the apologetical. It was obvious 
that he thought them benighted, and felt more in- 
clined to criticize than to defend them. His immediate 
successor, M, Berteaux, a broker, a busybody, and a 
politician with some of the politician's worst faults, but 
with keen receptivities and a conceit which occasionally 
would look like proper pride, felt the change in the 
country. The present writer can remember him in the 
Chamber, shortly after the Tangier affair, standing in 
his bench and threatening with violent gestures his 
own political friends who had made insulting allusions 
to the army. M. Messimy, advanced as he was, and 
with the initial disadvantage of having left the army for 
politics, appeared much more military in office than 
might have been expected. As to M. Millerand, his 
character being equal to his intelligence, he not only 
freed the army from the wretched trammels which 
Dreyfusism had put upon it, but treated it with a 
respect which could not but be contagious. The politi- 
cians who resented it were, however, compelled to copy 
such respect, and to-day even the worst ungentlemanli- 
ness in the Chamber seems decidedly cured of the tone 



The Chamber Dethroned 163 

it complacently affected about 1903. The division 
between France and the French army is a thing of the 
past. 

4. The Chamber Dethroned 

During the whole of its history the French Chamber 
was popular only once; that was after May 16, 1877, 
when three hundred and sixty-three deputies rose 
against President MacMahon and, right or wrong, em- 
bodied for a while the feeling of the majority in the 
nation. The Chamber had been in existence only a year 
then and was as full of promises as the Republican 
regime itself. After that date, it never once succeeded 
again in securing the national sympathy, and more 
than once it drew the national contempt on its head. 

However, the sentiment into which the country 
gradually settled after a long and disappointing ex- 
perience of Parliamentary government was chiefly one 
of profound indifference. The deputies were the rulers 
of the country; that was a matter of course; how they 
ruled it did not concern one Frenchman in twenty. 

After 1905, not only the Tangier affair, but a series 
of occurrences modified that feeling. For thirty years 
the Chamber had treated the short-lived Cabinets which 
it made and unmade as if fully conscious of their 
inferiority. On no occasion had it been compelled to 
appeal to anybody, or even trust anybody. The 
Tangier incident made the deputies feel, and, for the 
first time really appear, not only defeated but bewil- 
dered. They tried, indeed, to lay the blame of their 
shame on M. Delcasse, but the Cabinet in which M. 
Delcasse had served had been too submissively their 
obedient agent, and no one would believe that men so 



164 The Return of the Light 

haughty the day before were not responsible for their 
actions. Meanwhile the attention of the whole country 
and of Europe itself became centred on one man, M. 
Rouvier, and as the negotiations between France and 
Germany were carried on for the first time not only at 
the Foreign Office or at the German Embassy, but 
through semi-official statements in the Press of both 
countries, the Chamber suddenly receded into the 
background and assumed the humble part of the 
looker-on. It was a great falling off, and, strange to 
say, nobody seemed to notice it otherwise than with 
satisfaction. 

In the years which followed, the Chamber had the 
ill-luck to be seen repeatedly in the same predicament. 
It did not even attempt to deal with the vine-growers' 
disturbances in the south of France, and once more the 
country saw its interests placed in the hands of one 
individual, who this time was the wily Clemenceau. It 
was as passive when a new power, another Parliament, 
with chiefs and a discipline, the Syndicalist Labour 
Bourse, suddenly rose against it and fairly had it at bay 
on two occasions. Nobody who lived in Paris at the 
time will ever forget the electricians' and above all the 
postmen's strikes. There was considerable discomfort 
in the city, and after a time there was a certain amount 
of impatience which never bore the semblance of a 
panic; but through it all there was a sly enjoyment of 
the embarrassment in which the deputies found them- 
selves, and whoever met some of them at the time must 
have seen that they realized it with some confusion. 
This was emphasized during the postmen's strike by the 
treatment which M. Buisson and a few other Radical- 
Socialist deputies received at a meeting of the strikers. 
They were hooted off the platform where they had taken 



The Chamber Dethroned 165 

their seats uninvited, and that was the first open 
manifestation of the breach between the bourgeois 
Socialism and earnest Syndicalism. The strike of the 
Northern Railway-men gave rise to a similar situation, 
the Chamber appearing helpless and hardly attempting 
to disguise its annoyance under pointless speeches, 
while M. Briand, then Minister of the Interior, was 
practically left to adjust the difficulty alone. 

Such experiences cannot be repeated at short inter- 
vals without effect. The gradual displacing of the 
basis of authority from the Chamber to the Prime 
Ministers, which I will point out in the next chapter, 
dates from those days. 

But with effacement came an increased contempt 
when the deputies, apparently satisfied to have taken 
a back seat, made up for the humiliation by tangible 
advantages they craftily secured for themselves. They 
certainly obeyed unwise suggestions when they — un- 
known to the country and on one occasion profiting by 
the absence of most of the minority — voted for them- 
selves, first a handsome old-age pension, and later on 
an increase of two thirds of their salary. The nick- 
name Quinze Mille — their salary now being, in fact, 
fifteen thousand francs — sticks much more unpleasantly 
upon them than even the memory of the Panama 
corruption. The elector never became reconciled to the 
notion that while his own taxes rose the salary of his 
deputies should rise too. Even a reform like Propor- 
tional Representation, which at other times would have 
appeared eminently moral, did not succeed in im- 
pressing people with the disinterestedness of the Cham- 
ber. The only conclusion which the country thought 
safe was that deputies could not very well resist an 
impulse stronger than their own. 



i66 The Return of the Light 

5. The Craving J or Strong Men 

After the General Election of May, 191 4, M. Jaurls 
declared triumphantly that France had shown once 
more her antipathy for personal power. lie added that 
if the logic of the election were pressed to its conse- 
quences, as it ought to be, the Presidency of the Re- 
public should be abolished. The Socialist leader was 
partly right, undoubtedly. If the logic, not of an 
election, but of the interpretation by successive Parlia- 
ments of the Constitution were pressed to its conse- 
quences, the Presidency would appear an expensive and 
confusing superfluity. The present volume is nothing 
else than the recognition of this fact. But while M. 
Jaur^s objected to any initiative on the part of the 
President, I deplore the fact that the person who so far 
appeared the most in harmony with the so-called Con- 
stitution was M. Fallieres — that is to say, the President 
— whose lack of individuality and pitiful self-efface- 
ment were the nearest approach we could conceive 
to nonentity. 

But, as I said above, M. Jaures was only partly right. 
Logic was not that gentleman's forte, although he was 
a Utopian, and Utopians frequently make as much of 
logic as the devil does in Dante. The logic of a poor 
election is — no more than the logic of a poor constitu- 
tion — the logic of facts. M. Poincar6, having been 
elected against the wish of M. Jaures and his friends, 
it was natural that if the electorate seemed to favour 
the latter they should cry out that the country abode 
by them against the President. But I have pointed 
out several times already, that French elections, having 
never once since 1877 offered the voters any definite 
issue can never claim to be clear answers of the elector- 



The Craving for Strong Men 167 

ate as they are in England. The only inference that 
could be drawn from the election of 1914 was, that in 
the present electioneering system, Radical prefects, 
guided by a Radical Cabinet, as that of M. Doumergue, 
were sure to return a Radical majority. But this has 
nothing to do with the state of public opinion concern- 
ing the superiority of some responsible person over 
an irresponsible Assembly. 

The indisputable fact is that since the Tangier 
affair France has constantly been in search of a man 
— to such an extent, that successive disappointments 
have only made her longing more acute. Let me leave 
out the traditional love of the soldier which waits only 
for a chance of manifesting itself, and limit myself to a 
rapid review of the politicians she has magnified into 
statesmen or chiefs, merely because they were not 
afraid to take their responsibilities. 

At the moment of the Tangier affair, it was M. 
Rouvier, a man with a past, a disreputable past, but 
a self-made, energetic man, whom the ups and downs 
of existence had steeled against surprises, and who 
rather enjoyed a fight. I have said above how 
he monopolized an attention which nobody since 
Gambetta had ever commanded. 

At the time of the Agadir difficulty the head of gov- 
ernment was M. Clemenceau. This remarkable in- 
dividual is not easy to analyse. His purely literary 
works, which his political fame throws into the shade, 
reveal a very different personality from that to which 
the newspapers have accustomed us, ^ and, were it not 
for a pitiably narrow philosophical outlook, they would 
make the author decidedly sympathetic. But this side 

' I have endeavoured to disengage their characteristics in an article 
in the Nineteenth Century and After, May, 1907. 



1 68 The Return of the Light 

of M. Clemenceau is almost unknown. That which has 
made him famous is a bitter irony which has many 
times disported itself in actions even more than in 
words, and a capacity for political hatreds which talent 
and an off-hand manner of distributing contempt alone 
save from being rfepellent. Altogether M. Clemenceau 
had, during most of his existence, produced on his com- 
patriots the effect which the presence of Gambetta 
at the head of affairs would, according to Bismarck, 
produce in Europe; he was a drummer in a sick man's 
room. But he had the good fortune during his tenure 
of office to be able to resist Germany instead of ne- 
gotiating with her, and for the first time in his life his 
pride was indistinguishable from dignity. Then this 
man who appeared to be the lineal descendant of the 
great Jacobins, and obviously cultivated the resem- 
blance, was on several occasions placed face to face 
with the Revolution, and every time crushed it in 
perfect disregard of its great name and perfect con- 
sciousness of the littleness of its supporters; finally, he 
who as a mere deput}^ had made himself the judge of so 
many Cabinets, treated the deputies and senators as if 
they were rather unintelligent boys with more rights 
to the birch than to information. One of his com- 
munications to the Chamber on the subject of the 
Entente Cordiale will remain famous by its reticence 
and almost insulting brevity. On the whole, M. Clem- 
enceau, who had never acknowledged any authority, 
showed himself the most authoritative of Prime Minis- 
ters, and, in spite of all that in his already long life had 
been known against him, the country loved him for it. 
Three men came after him: M. Briand, M. Poincare, 
now President of the Republic, and M. Barthou. The 
three had real if unequal rights to the name which M. 



The Craving for Strong Men 169 

Barrds gave to the chief leaders of the Republican 
parties; they were "the sons of the wolf." M. Briand 
had been not only a Socialist, but an anarchist, and it 
seemed unpleasantly probable that his conversion to 
order had been more sincere than his interest in strikes. 
M. Poincare had a clean past, but he had been too long 
in politics not to have gathered some of the political 
dust upon him, and his somewhat narrow anti-clerical- 
ism could not be associated with greatness. As to M. 
Barthou, a shrewd Southerner with elegant ambitions, 
he was celebrated for a recantation which he had made 
when a member of the Meline Cabinet, and which was 
not easily distinguishable from a political treason. 
Yet, one after the other, these three men were looked 
upon as rescuers, and it might take them years of 
passivity to exhaust the reserve of hope which the 
nation once placed upon them. Why should this be? 
Merely because at various periods of their governments 
they had to speak up, show the strong hand, and on 
the whole make the enemies of order realize that they 
felt the country on their side against anarchy, and 
would act in consequence. 

If you will contrast this impression with that which 
spread not only through the country but through 
Europe — with the sole exception of Germany — when 
the Doumergue Cabinet went into office, and it seemed 
once more as if there were no man at the wheel in 
France, with a foolish and riotous crew instead, you 
will have no doubt that France has a passionate longing 
for strong men. If M. Jaures, who denied it, had been 
more capable of criticism, he would have been sur- 
prised at his own lack of popularity, in spite of qualities 
which ought to have been essentially popular in France. 
Mere talent is at present played out, and character has 



170 The Return of the Light 

taken its jjlace; men likt; Marshal MacMahon, or the 
Due de Broglie, who only secured esteem in the early 
years of the Repuhlie, would be to-day enthusiastically 
followed; the Tangier affair, by disclosing the danger of 
weakness, recreated the respect for energy. 

6. Transformation of Newspapers 

The difiference between French and English news- 
papers before the Tangier incident must strike the 
least attentive. The English have been placed by their 
situation in the world in the necessity to be attentive 
to what is going on in the whole world. And their 
patriotism is so wide awake, so much on its guard 
against untested theories and uncontrolled information, 
that it goes by facts and is mostly occupied with facts. 
This accuracy, coupled with the businesslike manner 
the English have almost universally in discussing the 
interests of their country, produces the wonderfully 
illuminating articles we can read in the great London 
dailies. English people are so absorbed in the matter 
of those compositions that they hardly ever notice 
their Demosthenic terseness and unconscious literary 
perfection. 

The French, in their taste for conversation, contro- 
versy, eloquence, and repartee, are the real descendants 
of the Gauls, and this tendency is so strong that it 
causes them too often to be indifferent to the subject 
on hand, and to take their chief pleasure in tin*, handling 
of it. It is not surprising, therefore, that at least since 
the days of Louis XV — when the French Colonial 
expansion practically stopped and the Revolutionary 
ideas engrossed every intellect — foreign topics should 
not have been frequent in their talk and, above all, 



Transformation of Newspapers 171 

in their Press; those objects are too remote and often 
too dry to be made impassioning. 

During the years which immediately preceded the 
danger of France, speculation, as I said before, ran 
riot, and the newspapers were full of it. No editor 
would have dreamed of trying to interest his readers in 
Tunis or the Congo when the whole country was mak- 
ing its mind up about the advisability of continuing or 
discontinuing the Church. The Temps newspaper 
would indeed go on devoting its first column to dis- 
cussions of foreign questions which, as a rule, were a 
faint reflection of the same in the London Times, but 
either this was skipped or it was that which gave the 
paper its exaggerated renown for dullness. In most of 
the other dailies, foreign news had to be hunted in the 
invisible corner where it had replaced the abstract of 
the Parliamentary proceedings under the Second 
Empire. 

In a few weeks after the Tangier affair, this feature 
of the French Press vanished. The semi-diplomatic 
conversations carried on in the Temps and the leading 
German papers, lent a dignity so far unhoped-for to the 
daily Press. A whole school of young journalists, with 
special training, abilities, and ambitions, were de- 
lighted to have a chance of playing a real part in the 
affairs of Europe, and while in company they would 
astonish by their reticence, they gradually filled the 
periodicals with their knowledge. To-day it is im- 
possible to open even a provincial French paper without 
seeing a comparatively large space of it devoted to 
foreign news, and leading articles frequently discuss it. 
At first, indeed, it was only a fad or a pose to pretend 
information or interest in international questions, but, 
while the aristocratic readers of the Gaulois may be 



i;." The Return o\' tlio T.ii;]it 

uogligiblo ill this v\>mioo(ion. thr tvadiMS of [\\c r<tit 
Journal atv not, and \vhoc\or tiaxols in tho romtliy 
tnnst have noticed tuHiuontiy how intolhi^ontly plain 
persons lotail thoir paper ox\ Ihoso iincstions. 

Vhc inipovlanco ol" this rhani;o cannot be oxag'goratod. 
1 shall point out in atiothor chapter how tho substitution 
(if the Ivuropeati for the mere party poii\t of view in tho 
politics ot' l-^ance is at the bottom of the impixwonient 
in the national spirit. 

7. Rapid Pi [fusion of a AV.c Mentality 

France, before the Tatij^ier shock recalled her to 
herself, was in a state oi ciMuplcte anai\-h\'. bn- 
mediately after, thi^ react iot\ priniuced by the con- 
sciousness oi dans^iM' broui^ht about a bei;intunv; of 
order, and even sometliitii; like a healthy li elemental 
- political creed. The instinct i^f self-preservation, the 
lo\eat\d respect oi the army .the craviui; t'ora man, which 
1 ha\c piMutcd out as aspects i>f that iwiction may be 
purely spontatuHHis in appearance, but they catmot 
exist without prii\eiples niakitii;' for authority and dis- 
cipline, and lunnui ultimatcK' to de\clon into a positi\e 
political systen\. In fact, the attitialc which 1 shall 
describe farther lUnvn, as the consec(uence of the new 
spirit of France, is little else than this development. 

But tlio FixMich are seldom content with living their 
ideas; they nuist think and speak thetn, and it cannot 
be denied that since the second half of the cii^htetMith 
century the habit has constatuly i;athercd stivngth. 
It is not surprising, theret'oiv, that as the Tangier alYair 
threw its light over mere political deticiencies, it should 
also have shown their comicction with dangerous 
formuhe. As the HrcNfusist nubcs wcw dispelled, a 



iJiffuM'on ()( a New \Tf:r)tality 173 

desire for a :;anf;r Jxnd liiyltcs \>\i\\<y:/)\)\\y than that 
which was respon:jhIe for the nation's bh'ndness and 

icA-\)](',r\(:,', -iiu: . \\x\\w(-r:.;\\\-j f>:l<,, and it rJid not wait very 
lonj^ {(iX jt/, ;,ati;;f action. The follov/in;^ chapters will 
show that while muUiniil'y.jri un'-Jer all it:, ihrrns — 
])hU(/./)]i}ncji], :;<'x;ial, and ]\\.<r.>.]-/ };-•)/] l.een ■.'pi(]\vx]]y 
i'\]\.(:r]r\'.' fr')rn if/; caHicKt e;ci;on' rj;/, lo the Jov/er strata 
in I'ren' Jj //.lety, f>orne of the:,e e/jyonents themselves 
haf] nreori'.i'Jered their ideas, and a numerous ^/?7^, 
;;of>erer anrJ [getter-informed than the Dreyfusist "in- 
tf.-llectual;;, " had hf-''/,rrI of their n;eantation. This was 
nf>t all. While the -Jo// vein:' rrN^/,/:', v/er^- left to their 
<]]•■'< ■•}A'>r\ of materialism, othe-r doetrines had heen 
jjropounded hy men far f^uj/^rior in talf.nt to Zola 
and in intelligenf;e as distinj^ui; hed from mere v/it to 
Anatole Prance. The hooks of these men had never 
been jjopular enr>i);/h to eounteni.et the coarser current, 
hut they were universally kno7/n all the s^j.me, and the 
public mind had only to turn to tfiem for the systems 
without which the French always seerrj i;neorr;[ortable. 
In this way a body of ideas whirh h.-id been clear and 
distinct in the minds of thou^sands of cultivated in- 
dividuals, but had bf^;n hindered in their expansion by 
unfavourable environment, was suddenly liberated, and, 
nij>idly diffus'-d ?),t [present by literature and by the 
J'res:, took ]////,, ir>rj of the large majority among 
tho/; f;apable of lucid thought. 

'i he follov/ing ehaj>ters v/ill recapitulate the most 
vital of these ideas. 



SECTION II 

INTELLECTUAL PREPARATION OF THE NEW SPIRIT BY THE 
EXPERIENCE OF THE BEST 

This is the counterpart of the preparation for the 
intellectual and moral decadence of France which I 
traced to the philosophy and literatiu-e of the Second 
Empire, but which might be traced further back — to 
the Revolutionists and their prophets, the Encycloped- 
ists. As I said in the first chapters of Part I, France 
was degraded by the poor philosophy of its leading 
circles during the greater portion of the nineteenth 
century, and if this lowering of the rational light had 
continued, no shock, no catastrophe would have been 
strong enough to produce the effects which we hope to 
see arise more and more from the awakening of 1905. 
In fact, the Revolution was no lesson for most of its 
cultivated adherents, and, in the same way, 1870 was 
in a few years forgotten by the masses, because in one 
case, the metaphysics of the Revolution remained in the 
ascendancy at the beginning of the nineteenth century, 
and in the other only a few exceptional intellects were 
shaken by the German victory. The lucky coincidence, 
without which this book would have no object, was the 
combination of a great patriotic emotion of the nation 
at large with a radical intellectual change of the most 
distinguished thinkers and writers. Were it not for 
this conversion the effort of France towards her re- 

174 



Reaction Against the Revolution 175 

covery wotdd depend entirely upon the political fluctua- 
tions, and would no doubt be in great jeopardy, whereas 
in the present circumstances politics can only weaken 
or retard it transiently. The fact is that the deteriora- 
tion of the country would be at an end at once, if the 
handful of politicians who make use against it of a 
superannuated machinery could either be swept aside 
by popular indignation, or, which is, unfortunately, less 
probable — be won to saner ideas. There might be more 
mistakes made, but the national atmosphere would 
seem incredibly more pure and freed from its deceptive 
or baneful influences. As it is, the least defeat of Par- 
liamentary omnipotence, even the least obstacle placed 
in the way of the Radical majority, is attended with a 
feeling of universal relief. All this would be impossible 
if the intellectual and ethical, or sentimental changes, 
which the following chapters will point out, were not 
deeper than any similar modifications of the national 
standpoint since the Revolution; unquestionably more 
so, for instance, than the poetic conversion produced 
by Chateaubriand with the assistance of Napoleon's 
strong hand. 

I. Reaction against the Revolution 

The French Revolution is one of those colossal 
events which not only baffle adequate appreciation, but 
balk the imaginative effort; after years of deeply 
human reading which ought to result, and apparently 
does result, in vivid tableaux, even the historian finds 
himself inclined to think of the years 1 789-1 794 as 
belonging to an age divided from ours by something 
mysterious and intangible, almost unreal. 

The political consequences of the Revolution par- 



176 The Return of the Light 

take of the same character. They forced themselves 
on the world with a violence which made criticism as 
difficult as composure may be during a natural cata- 
clysm, and after sixscore years, democracy is still a 
dogma in millions of intellects, while the fascination of 
the word Liberty, without any analysis of its content, 
has lost little of its power. 

It would, therefore, be a momentous occurrence if, 
in the very country which made the Revolution, an 
intellectual change should happen universal enough to 
counteract the weird effects I mentioned above, and to 
be in itself a sort of living criticism of the Revolutionary 
principles. A mood may be modified to some extent by 
arguments, but it can only be displaced by another 
mood. 

Very few signs of such a transformation were seen 
during the nineteenth century. There were, indeed, 
many people whom their tastes, traditions, and too 
often their interests or prejudices preserved from the 
revolutionary fascination, and they had representatives, 
far better than themselves, in literature, philosophy, and 
politics. The names of De Maistre, and De Bonald, of 
Lamartine — in his early verse — and of Berryer, need 
no comment. The Church, too, looked upon the 
Revolution as a sort of heresy, and this attitude ulti- 
mately resulted in the promulgation of the celebrated 
Syllabus of Pius IX, a document in which all the con- 
sequences derived from the dogma of liberty were 
anathematized. But whatever might be the authority 
of these opponents to the principles of 1789, the former 
found favour in every part of Europe — in Italy more 
than anywhere else — and either initiated, or assisted, 
or attended a universal rise, first of the bourgeois classes 
against the autocracy and aristocracy, later of the 



Reaction Against the Revolution 177 

working classes against capitalists of all descriptions. 
In France alone, the minor revolutions of 1830 and 
1848, the Commune in 1871, the Republican election of 
1876, and the Socialist election of 1898, were all mani- 
festations of the same spirit — they all indicated the 
civic and economic ascent of classes so far regarded 
as inferior. 

Meanwhile a parallel state of mind became apparent, 
which was called Liberalism — that is to say, an opinion 
savouring of the doctrines of Liberty — and was an 
attempt of people rather conquered by than won to the 
Revolution to present its tenets in a light which might 
make them acceptable even to the Catholic Church. 
This so-called Liberal state of mind arose from the 
certainty in which these people were that no human 
power could resist the Revolutionary headway, and that 
it was sheer waste of energy to try to do it. Such a 
compromise was inevitable. It found one great theorist, 
M. de Tocqueville, the author of a book on the United 
States of America, which has hardly taken a few 
wrinkles, and several champions whose names will be 
remembered among those of great and good men: the 
Comte de Montalembert, the Due de Broglie, Pere 
Lacordaire, Bishop Dupanloup. But compromises are 
seldom successful. This one failed repeatedly, the last 
time in a conspicuous manner, when the ralliement 
advocated by Pope Leo XIII obviously fell short of its 
comparatively modest object, and had finally to be 
negatived by the next Pope, Pius X. The Liberals, on 
one hand, never were acknowledged by the ultramon- 
tane Catholics, and as a portion of the modem world 
they were so scanty a body as to be almost unperceived. 
Altogether, neither the anathemas of Pius IX nor the 
concessions of Leo XIII were of historical weight in the 



178 The Return of the Light 

mighty Revolutionary development, and we shall pre- 
sently see that the reaction came from men foreign or 
hostile to theological considerations, and was chiefly 
produced by positive experience. 

Nothing can be more striking than the impression 
left on Taine by the events of 1 870-1 871, and visible in 
his correspondence.^ This pure idealist, whom I have 
described in another chapter as completely indifferent 
to contingencies, had a whole portion of his soul re- 
vealed to him by the war and the Commune. He was a 
patriot and a man of order quite as much as a philo- 
sopher. Everything sounds surprising and almost ex- 
aggeratedly simple in this great writer, but that is 
because he lived in a realm of abstractions. The dis- 
covery of his own feelings reacted upon him as it must 
on a man accustomed to generalize from all and any 
data, and he who had been so remote from political 
considerations started the great political work which 
eventually became the monument called Origines de la 
France Contemporaine. 

The only work worth mentioning on the same 
subject was Thiers's well-known but very superficial 
Histoire de la Revolution. Taine applied to these new 
researches a mind trained in three or four departments 
of literary activity, and a method which even his sys- 
tematic intellect could not deprive of its highly scientific 
character. The results were remarkable. Even the 
criticism of such a carping specialist as M. Aulard leaves 
the Origines untouched as a great historical monument. 

Now, what is, on the whole, the Origines de la France 
Contemporaine? It is, in the first place, an historical 
investigation, the conclusion of which is the emphatic 
statement that the Revolution was the work, not by 

' H. Taine, Sa Vie et sa Correspondance, Paris, Hachette, Ltd. 



Reaction Against the Revolution 1 79 

any means of the nation — which only wanted reforms — 
but of the violent few, whose history is that of the clubs 
of Paris and the largest provincial towns. In the second 
place, it is an analysis tested by numerous facts, of the 
Revolutionary mentality. What is this? Practically 
that of Rousseau as appearing mostly from the Contrat 
Social. In fact, whenever the Revolutionists spoke in 
their own name, the principles could easily be brought 
round to those of Rousseau's short treatise, and they 
never lost a chance of expressing their sense of in- 
debtedness to him. And what is the Contrat Social? 
An entirely idealistic construction which even the 
literary genius of its author could not have made the 
basis of an immense social rebuilding if the age had not 
been poisoned by speculation, and, above all, if cir- 
cumstances had not been so extraordinary. 

The Contrat Social is a mere play of the intelligence. 
Rousseau made abstraction while writing it from all 
historical data, and although he had more political 
sense than his modern critics will admit, ^ he finally 
produced a work which is nothing else than a philosophi- 
cal hypothesis. Society existed exclusively by the free 
consent of the individuals composing it ; so the author- 
ity or government could only be delegated by the commu- 
nity to one or several representatives, and could not be 
alienated for ever. Careful distinction ought to be made 
between the sovereign, who in reality is the community, 
and the government that is only its representative. 
There were no subjects ; equality was the basis of society, 
and liberty was its corollary, as nobody can be bound to 
his equal for a longer time than he chooses to be. 

^ The Contrat Social concludes in favour of decentralization, which, 
in fact, is acknowledged to-day as one of the best counter-weights to 
the tyranny of democracy. 



i8o The Return of the Light 

The Revolution applied these ideas in their rigour. 
Instead of reforming the monarchy, it made a tabula 
rasa of French society, and persuaded itself that it was 
rebuilding it according to the superior standards 
summed up in the motto, " Liberty, equality, fraternity." 

This is not the place to criticize the Contrat Social; 
this has been done a hundred times before. SufBce it to 
say that the evil to which the present volume reverts 
in numberless passages, viz., the inadequacy of a gov- 
ernment immediately dependent upon the multitude 
is the direct outcome of the doctrine of Rousseau. 
What I deal with here is merely the influence of Taine's 
analysis of the Revolutionary mentality as reflected 
from the Contrat Social. After several years of hard 
work on his book, Taine endeavoured to disengage his 
own impression, and it was so elemental that he was 
afraid it might appear ridiculous. It could be summed 
up as follows: Rousseau and the Revolutionists, Taine 
said, imagined that the government of a nation was a 
very simple arrangement which only needed reason to 
be perfect. It was an enormous mistake. Politics is less 
a science than an art, and this art is one of infinite com- 
plication, which only long practice helped by heredi- 
tary qualities can teach. The Revolution, ignoring this 
principle, was doomed to build on the unreal, and, in 
fact, it appears as purely systematic. Taine's ideal in 
politics was evidently the English view, which is less 
a view than an ethos, endlessly suggesting reform, no 
matter how partial, rather than wholesale destruction 
and rebuilding. 

The reputation of Taine, when he wrote the eleven 
volumes of the Origines was at its zenith. He was 
universally looked upon as impartial. As a philosopher 
he could not be regarded as exaggeratedly attached to 



Reaction Against the Revolution i8i 

the beliefs of the past ; in fact he professed to ignore the 
past in his speculations, and with the tendencies of an 
ascetic he had been the protagonist of materialism. As 
a critic and writer he had no rival. Altogether his 
spirit, method, and art had made him less the chief 
of a school than a model, and whoever in French 
literature claimed any degree of sincerity acknowledged 
his influence. 

It was inevitable that his historic views, startling 
as they were to a generation which had been accustomed 
to take the Revolution as a whole and without discus- 
sion, should modify the concepts so far admitted. A 
few people entered reservations; the Due de Broglie 
said that he could easily bring forward as many facts 
in favour of the Revolution as M. Taine had adduced 
against it. But there were no protests, and after a 
quarter of a century the effect of the Origines is obvi- 
ously greater every day. Taine's criticisms have been 
substantiated by most of his successors. His purely 
historic views on the Revolution are those of M. Sorel, 
of M. Madelin, and of M. Lendtre, and M. Aiilard has 
lost rather than gained in his encounter with grateful 
disciples of the master. The epic grandeur of the 
Revolution still remains with the nation in arms against 
all Europe, but it has been taken away from the maniacs 
of the Comite de Salut Public. The apologists of 
Robespierre and Marat, even of Danton, are so few as 
to be invisible, and if M. Clemenceau were to speak 
to-day of the lesson, as he called it, given to Kings on 
January 21, 1793, in the tone he could take ten years 
ago, he would sound more ridiculous than horrible. 
As to the analysis of the political philosophy of the 
Revolutionists, its results seem to have been final. 
The notion of a wholesale remodelling of a large 



1 82 The Return of the Light 

country appears absurd, and the sovereignty of the 
multitude is either an academic notion, which St. 
Thomas Aquinas might hold, or it is an absurdity. 

This change in public opinion showed itself in a 
manner that could admit of no doubt in 1912, at the 
time of the Rousseau celebrations. The fact is, that 
after Taine, two writers of rare merit, M. Faguet and 
M. Jules Lemaitre, had resumed ex professo the in- 
vestigation into the Swiss philosopher begun in connec- 
tion with the Revolution by the author of Les Origines, 
and their conclusions had been severe. Rousseau was 
a genius, no doubt, but genius has been known many 
times to co-exist with more than serious shortcomings. 
In this instance these shortcomings were a callousness 
to moral niceties which seems unsurpassable, and a rare 
power for seeing the wrong or paradoxical side of a 
question. Rousseau was a great writer, a contemptible 
character, and what the French language calls better 
than any other, an esprit faux. Later on M. Paul 
Bourget was to dwell — somewhat ponderously — on an- 
other taint of Rousseau, which he called sheer lunacy, 
and which the readers of the philosopher's well-known 
letter to Hume must have noticed, even if they called 
it by a milder name. As it is, when it was mooted in 
Parliament that the Rousseau celebrations should as- 
sume a national character, M. Maurice Barres, who 
rose to speak against the bill, was certainly the mouth- 
piece of all the cultivated portion of the country. In 
fact, when the celebrations did take place, and when, 
as had been proposed, the Government appeared 
officially at them, the absence of literary men suf- 
ficiently independent to be representative of their 
profession, proved clearly that the event had been 
changed into a mere political manifestation. The 



Reaction Against the Revolution 183 

notion that Rousseau was a benefactor of the country 
whose language he wrote with such mastery seems 
impossible to revive, and the refutation of minor errors 
on the part of M. Faguet and M. Jules Lemaitre will 
never amount to a rehabilitation. 

Taine was not alone affected by the war and the 
Commune to the extent I have just indicated. With 
less of the feeling of a catastrophe, and more of a dis- 
appointment, with elegance, and often with the disdain 
of elegance for coarse contingencies, the other prophet 
of the Second Empire, Renan, after taking the same 
lesson, took almost the same method to enforce it, and 
advocated similar remedies to prevent its repetition. 
His surprise at the brutality of the Prussians, when he 
had been used so long to regard their country as the 
home of culture, did not shake his belief in culture; it 
only made it more decided. But the signal failure of the 
Republic in the first two decades of its existence left 
upon him a deep distrust of the democratic aptitude 
for government. His book. La Reforme Intellectuelle 
et Morale de la France, is an apology for the supremacy 
of the intelligence, and an overt indictment of the 
democracy. Renan thought that no country can be 
true to itself unless the best in it are responsible for the 
government; and his natural tendency was to look for 
such an aristocracy among, not the so-called best-born, 
but the best-informed. Sages and philosophers ought 
to be the legislators in his Commonwealth. 

This was an idea which experience had to test like 
every other. It was tested and found wanting when the 
Dreyfusist "Intellectuals" were associated with politi- 
cians in framing the public spirit of France, and when 
M. Berthelot, Renan's bosom friend and a chemist of 
universal repute, was made Minister of Foreign Affairs. 



1 84 The Return of the Light 

The results were laughable. But Renan's name was 
so great towards 1880, his judgment had so much 
weight, that to see him secede in cold blood from the 
democratic side took in the eyes of the elite the im- 
portance of an historical fact. The impression it must 
have made on M. Jules Lemaitre and on a number of 
Lycee professors is easily gathered from their intellectual 
curve. 

On the whole, the Revolutionists' fallacy, that power 
ought to be vested in the multitude, had been exploded 
long before the European event which showed its ab- 
surdity ; the Revolution appeared not only to the then 
rising school of the Action Franqaise, but to many 
reflective minds, as a movement completely deviated 
from its proper object, and the plain but far-reaching 
principle that a country's government ought to be in 
the hands of experts was ready to pass into popular 
consciousness. 

2. Reaction against Scientism 

Another "idol" which, in 1905, was still standing, 
and blindly worshipped by the millions, had also been 
considerably shaken before the end of the nineteenth 
century. That was Science, as its name used to be then 
written, like that of a god or living genius. 

It was unfortunate that the famous phrase, "the 
bankruptcy of science," was, towards 1895, fathered 
on Brunetiere, who was not responsible for more than 
its popular commentary. Brunetiere was more dreaded 
than respected ; he was a formidable polemist, with un- 
suspected resources, which made him the more danger- 
ous, but his rhetoric was often empty, his apparent 
logic was frequently mere dialectics, and he had a bold 



Reaction Ag^ainst Scientism 185 



way of generalizing, which put one on his guard against 
him. The consequence was that the formula "Science 
is a bankrupt" was challenged at once as being one of 
the epigrammatic statements habitual to the critic, 
and numberless refutations of it were given by men 
worth speaking for science. 

It then appeared that Science was not a bankrupt, 
since it had not made the promises it was accused 
of not having redeemed, and consequently the emotion 
created by M. Brunetiere had been unfounded. 

Yet this emotion was not in vain. It might be true 
that Science, even as represented by Descartes in 
La Methode, or Condorcet in his Esquisse, or Renan in 
VAvenir de la Science — ^had not hinted that the key to 
the universal riddle should be found in Science properly 
deduced, but innumerable people had believed that 
such a promise had been made, and among the bour- 
geoisie nearest to the lower classes the belief was hardly 
short of a dogma, and productive of powerful effects. 
It was, therefore, all-important, that if there existed a 
misunderstanding concerning Science, it should be dis- 
pelled in a way likely to serve at the same time as 
an illumination and a clearing away of a dangerous 
sophism. 

In fact, the consequences of this belief in Science bore 
more immediately on practical life than was generally 
supposed. The logic of the people could not help in- 
ferring that the triumphant progress of Science meant 
the end of Superstition, and Superstition, since the days 
of Voltaire, was difficult to distinguish from faith. 
This was the speculative victory of Science, and it 
enabled the unreflective individual to trust to his 
betters for a system of verities that would at last be 
worthy of the name; many a poor school-teacher who 



1 86 The Return of the Light 

had just caught a gHmpse of modern knowledge at his 
training college, lived in the hope that education would 
some day, perhaps in the near future, furnish a com- 
plete explanation of the world and life, and provide 
simple rules to replace the superannuated ethics. But 
there was another prospect which appealed to even 
larger numbers. Science meant speculative light, but 
it meant also practical progress, civilization, a maximum 
of happiness on a minimum of effort — the vision, in a 
word, which the Socialists everlastingly conjured up 
before their simple audiences. 

Religion, with what its enemies call her ready-made 
truth and her ready-made bliss in an hypothetic future, 
has often been charged with soothing believers into apa- 
thy. But no apathy could exceed the passivity into which 
the new faith caused ignorant people to settle. It left 
them only the outward routine of morals ; the inner im- 
pulse was promptly exhausted in default of a living source. 

Therefore, it was fortunate for the moral health of 
France that an exaggerated mistrust of Science suc- 
ceeded an exaggerated belief in it. It was good that the 
notion of effort in the domain of life as well as in that of 
thought was restored to the public consdiousness, even at 
the cost of some disquietude. Effort is better than ignoble 
satisfaction and, above all, silly certitude. There was 
more virility in France after Brunetiere's somewhat the- 
atrical demonstration than before, and it was virility of 
the best kind, that which arises from lucid thought. 

3. Reaction against Materialism 

I have pointed out above that Realism in literature 
was not exclusively a literary method, but had a moral 
substratum which was promptly to appear when Realism 



Reaction Against Materialism 187 

grew as radical as it was in its nature to be, and became 
known as Naturalism. This underlying principle was 
the conviction that as there is neither beauty nor ugli- 
ness in the subjects of literary composition, there is no 
such thing as moral good or evil either. So the same 
sincerity which absolves an artist from the reproach of 
having no preference for beauty also absolves a man 
from the reproach of cynicism. The sincerity of pessim- 
ism was all the ethics of the school of Zola. I shall 
draw attention in another chapter to the converse 
influence of psychological literature on the tone of the 
writers who are attracted by it; moral elevation is its 
immediate consequence along with literary distinction. 
So I need only remind the reader of this chapter that 
among the ideas which had been "seeds of light," and 
only waited for an opportunity to develop, was the 
condemnation of materialism in literature and art 
which Brunetiere once more called in 1896, the Revival 
of Idealism. While the lower classes were absorbing 
slowly and after long reluctance the poison of Natural- 
ism, there was an elite, led by Brunetiere in criticism, 
by M. de Vogiie and M. Paul Bourget in literature, and 
by Puvis de Chavannes in art, which had broken away 
from the stifling dungeon and lived in sentiment instead 
of living in sensation. Let any great emotion impress 
the multitude with the feeling that sometimes sacrifice 
may be as natural as self-seeking and more attractive, 
and this noble philosophy would be sure to meet a 
spontaneous demand. 

4. Reaction against Internationalism 

The well-known name of this reaction is Nationalism, 
and it is a phenomenon which has reappeared many 



1 88 The Return of the Light 

times in the course of French history. In its latest 
form it was represented and embodied rather than 
formulated by Paul Deroulede. Deroulede was tall 
and warm-hearted, eloquent and poetic; this was 
enough for some people to call him quixotic. In reality 
he was a shrewd and practical organizer as well as a 
bard, and no idea of ridicule ought to attach to his 
quixotism. He was not twenty when the War of 1870 
broke out, but he immediately enlisted, and when a 
short time afterwards he was wounded and incapaci- 
tated, his mother came to his general with her younger 
son, a lad of barely seventeen, and offered him as a 
substitute. After the conclusion of the peace, which he 
regarded as shameful, Deroulede devoted his life to the 
noblest propagandism for the return of the lost pro- 
vinces, and to an endless warfare against the enemies of 
France out and inside the frontiers. His conspiracy, 
trial, and banishment are well-known episodes of a 
career which no suspicion of selfishness or attitudinizing 
ever touched. 

Edouard Drumont was the theorist of Nationalism, 
its historian, and for many years its dreaded pamphle- 
teer. For Drumont the real enemy of France was not 
the German, but the Jew. The German could only be 
dangerous when he broke through the frontier, but the 
Jew had no such effort to make. He was comfortably 
settled in Paris, within easy reach of all the vital organs 
of French life. These, of course, he could not handle 
himself, but it was child's play for him to set in motion 
the links between himself and the Government. Dru- 
mont firmly believed in the equation of finance with 
politics and of finance with Israel, and the Panama 
affair came as a striking confirmation of his theory. 
The immediate consequence was not inconsiderable. 



Reaction Against Internationalism 189 

Nationalism took on the much more active form of 
Boulangism, and if Boulanger had had the least touch 
of the Roman in him, the play would have promptly 
been played out; the Parliamentary Republic, which 
was making such a poor debut, would have been swept 
off, and men less open to bribery would have replaced 
the unpleasantly notorious Chamber. 

The lineal descendant of Drumont's Nationalism is 
the doctrine of the same name actively promoted since 
the Dreyfus affair by the Action Frangaise. The 
founder of this group, M. Henri Vaugeois, saw in the 
Dreyfus agitation the proof of the presence within 
the frontiers of France of the hostile influence which 
Drumont had revealed before the Panama affair. Only 
it appeared to him that the Jew was not alone to live 
quartered in France, fattening upon the best of the 
land; in his opinion there were three more classes of 
people who have no business in the country; the 
Protestants, the Freemasons, and the nondescripts 
from all parts of the world, whom he calls the Meteques 
or barbarians. The evident duty of good Frenchmen 
was to rid, if not the territory, at any rate the Govern- 
ment, of this quadruple plague, and "La France aux 
Frangais" is a motto which it is imperative to take at 
once in its literal meaning. 

Such a doctrine was sure to be frequently exaggerated 
from Nationalism to chauvinism, and to sound more 
resolute than Christian, or even reasonable. Inter- 
preted by a man like M, Leon Daudet, with whom 
violence and exaggeration are a style, no matter how 
attractive to some people by its picturesqueness, its 
inevitable result would be much more to rouse hatreds 
than to create unity. It is doing a poor turn to one's 
countrymen to persuade them that they are better 



190 The Return of the Light 

than everybody else, hinting at the same time that 
everybody else is mentally or morally deficient. Yet 
the Nationalism even of these overheated people, helped 
as it was by an excellent criticism of much in our 
democracy, was not wasted. It acted as a tonic, and 
at a time when the tendency was towards universal 
dissolution, it was not so much of a fault as it might 
have been, if it mostly appealed to young men, and was 
likely to send them excited into the streets. The clam- 
our of a popular manifestation was welcome after years 
of unquestioning submission or stupid inertness. 

5. Success of Provincial Literature 

What is called '' Provincialisme" is intimately con- 
nected with Nationalism, and, in fact, might be re- 
garded as its hterary form. It does not belong to any 
writer or thinker in particular, as its roots were visible 
in a great deal of the literary production antecedent 
to the current use of the name, yet it is difficult to view 
it apart from the personal development of one highly 
interesting individual, M. Maurice Barres. 

M. Barres is a very fair type of modern Frenchman, 
and almost an epitome of the progress of France which 
this book endeavours to follow. He started with all the 
characteristics of the diseases of his day. He was an 
exasperated dilettante, passionately fond of intellectual 
enjoyment, haughtily disdainful of inferior pleasures, 
and hardly less so of inferior duties. His early volumes, 
Sous VCEil des Barbares, LHomme Libre, Le Jardin de 
Berenice, were handbooks of exquisite sensualism. Yet 
he had solidity under his apparently unbridled fancy, he 
had a sound judgment, his power of analysis was too 
great to admit of long self-deception, and he could but 



Success of Provincial Literature 191 

weary of a search after elusive pleasures, which endless 
variety alone was capable of prolonging. 

In fact, by the time he wrote Les Deracines he had 
discovered a source of self-realization which, beside 
those he had known so far, had the appearance and a 
great deal of the virtue of disinterestedness. Man soon 
wearies of sensations, no matter how refined, but he 
never wearies of himself. So, if something in him could 
be made the centre of his affections, he would no longer 
be at the mercy of adventitious pleasures. M. Barres 
thought he found this centre in the relation of man with 
the milieu to which he owes the most, in which his roots 
are deepest — that is to say, his home, his family, his 
environment, the habits and traditions of his province, 
the spirit of la petite patrie — in one word, that which is 
dearest to him, because it is most instinctively himself. 
The help which a nobleman derives from the thought 
of his ancestry and their traditions everybody can ob- 
tain from a similar consideration of associations which 
are his own, and which nobody can borrow or steal from 
him, because they are truly part of his soul. 

This systematic ''Provincialism,'' as it is called — ■ 
without any unpleasant sense being any longer attached 
to the phrase — would apparently be in conflict with the 
comparatively recent idea of French unity. A Lorrain 
like M. Barres might be inclined to remember that his 
province had only been part of the greater France for 
about three centuries, but the power of exclusion of 
everything foreign included in provincialism compen- 
sates this weak point. Besides, the natives of the- 
French provinces, if they push back far enough into 
their history, ultimately come to Celtic times, where 
theyliave-tQ stop, and where once more they find imity. 
The desire for this refreshing sensation is certainly at 



192 The Return of the Light 

the bottom of the effort made by many recent Celtic 
scholars to reduce to a minimum the Prankish and 
Roman influx into the autochthonous population, and 
it shows to what extent a real French feeling is alive 
under conceptions which would seem to belong ex- 
clusively to the savant or to the poet. 

This revelation of the native land, not as a poetic 
symbol, but as a sort of permanent ancestor, was to 
produce a whole train of practical consequences. M. 
Barres gradually came to reason as follows : 

If our native land holds in itself such a virtue, it must be 
because some active conviction forced itself upon the 
generations which came before us, and prevented them 
from adulterating the treasure handed down to them. 
Had it been different, had there been a breach in the 
precious chain, we should seek in vain for the place where 
we find our support. So it is with thankfulness that we 
look back to the past. But what a disheartening prospect 
if we were to fear that our successors may disregard what 
we ourselves have done and interrupt the tradition we 
strive to keep in its purity! The inference which such a 
thought immediately brings in its train is that we have 
certain rights which our descendants ought not to ignore, 
but it is also that we should be careful to respect the rights 
of those who have preceded us. In this way a continuity 
arises in the history of our country, the dead participate 
in the life which they have transmitted to us; they have 
their rights, the consideration of which is no burden on our 
minds but a refreshing element of stability. 

A mere sentimental fad, some people have said. Is 
it a sentimental fad which alone makes the history of 
our country not only interesting, but even possible.'* 
Is not the notion of the presence of the dead at the 
bottom of that great thing, the_ patriotism of the 



Reaction Against Socialism 193 

Japaiiese? Is it not a fact that the philosophy of 
the Roman history which Fustel de Coulanges has so 
admirably set forth in La Cite Antique is built on an 
idea almost identical with this? 

We are compelled to admit that this new Nationalism, 
half poetic and half scientific, is merely the intellectual 
formulation of one of the most venerable instincts in 
our nature. It wears an appearance of austereness 
which is not prepossessing to strangers, it is true, but 
it also gives to those who make it the basis of their civic 
life that touch of reasonableness in self-denial which 
was so visible in the ancients, and after a period during 
which elegance was to renounce patriotism as a bar- 
baric selfishness — even if unmanly indolence attended 
the sacrifice — such an attitude appears as a return to an 
essential duty. In fact, it ought not to be called a new 
Nationalism or any such appellation; it is merely the 
feeling which must have been deep in Jeanne d'Arc, 
or even Philippe Auguste, and to which the modern 
inclination towards analysis only adds consciousness. 

It is not out of place to observe also that a system of 
very practical reforms termed Regionalism is immedi- 
ately connected with Provincialism. The effort towards 
decentralization through provincial assemblies, provin- 
cial legislation, provincial universities, etc., is part of the 
antagonism against the tyranny of Parliamentarism and 
the routine of bureaucracy, and opens practical channels 
for an impulse too deep not to tend towards actual 
realization; 

6. Reaction against Socialism 

I have no intention to number Conservatism — ^honest 
and intelligent as it may be when represented by men 
13 



194 The Return of the Light 

like M. Leroy-Beaulieu, for instance — as one of the 
vital tendencies which, long before 1905, had held out 
hopes of a saner spirit in France. This criticism of the 
Socialist claims is too purely economical, too doctrinaire 
also, to rank with the moral motives I have recapitu- 
lated in the preceding chapters. 

The only resistances to Marxist Socialism worth re- 
cording were very different from that cold-hearted 
discussion. There was on one hand the school of 
Catholic sociology, practically founded by Leo XIII, 
and which devoted itself to studying economic questions 
in the light of human brotherhood and, on the other, 
Syndicalism as opposed to bourgeois Socialism. I have 
not the least doubt but the efforts of men like M. de la 
Tour du Pin, M. Lorin, M. de Mun, etc., will some 
day be recognized when it appears that they were made 
in the only spirit combining reasonableness and a 
Christian point of view ; but the practical effects of their 
doctrine are more visible in Belgium and Germany than 
in France, and I ought not to make capital of them. 

It is very different with Syndicalism, which in the 
last twenty years transformed the outlook in the world 
of labour, and at the same time gave rise to the highly 
interesting philosophy generally known as that of M. 
Georges Sorel. Until almost the end of the nineteenth 
century, French Socialism was little else than ancient 
Communism, which a political revolution ought to 
bring from theories into practice. It was hardly dif- 
ferent in the exposes which M. Jaures made in 1898 
from what it was fifty years before, when Louis Blanc 
was its representative. Both men held that the work- 
ing multitude should save itself from its exploiters by 
sending into the legislating assemblies enough deputies 
to secure the majority, and afterwards modify at will 



Reaction Against Socialism 195 

the regime of industrial property. But after half a 
century it appeared that if the method had not been 
perfected, the spirit of its protagonists had not im- 
proved either. Certainly Louis Blanc was less am- 
bitious, less self-satisfied, and a great deal more efficient 
than M. Jaures. There were a number of Socialist 
deputies in the Chamber, but they were either bourgeois 
like M. Jaures himself, or workmen rapidly evolving — 
under the influence of a salary, of good clothes, and fine 
talking — into bourgeois. Meanwhile the working-classes 
were not much better off ; they seemed only a little more 
bewildered than before by beginnings as disappointing 
as the dreams of yore. 

It was then that a poor consumptive clerk, Fernand 
Pelloutier, bethought himself of a new idea. Bourgeois 
Socialists were bourgeois all the same ; they could not be 
representatives of labour. Chambers and Senates had 
nothing in common with the working-classes. Therefore 
the working-classes ought to turn their backs upon 
them and try to manage their own affairs. But could 
this be done? Easily; the principle of Association had 
been recognized although its legislation was not com- 
plete ; there were trades unions everywhere. Let these 
multiply; let their most energetic members make the 
need of them, and also the practicability of them, 
recognized by fomenting strikes on any pretence 
wherever they did not exist, and their numbers would 
soon increase. Supposing that, Syndicalism thus tak- 
ing strength, a wide federation of unions might become 
possible, some day this federation would be strong 
enough to vote a universal strike, during which the 
workmen would capture all the industrial instruments, 
and from that day use them without any reference to 
capital. This is the hope that was called le grand Soir. 



196 The Return of the Light 

Pelloutier died too soon to see the expansion of 
Syndicalism which resulted in the foundation of the 
General Labour Confederacy and the manifestations of 
its power at the time of the postal and railway strikes, 
but the transformation of Socialism from a political 
ticket into a system of professional vindications was 
accomplished when he died. There were no longer 
parties in France, but classes more deeply divided by 
their conflicting interests than nations by their frontiers. 

One man, who was not a workman himself, but was 
an intimate friend of Pelloutier, was a keen observer and 
a philosopher worth the name, saw this change with the 
gratification possible to a rarely-equipped intellect capa- 
ble of subtle, though broad, comprehension, and at 
the same time with a satisfaction of a higher character 
which I will presently describe. M. Georges Sorel was 
past middle age when he began to be known. He had 
been an engineer and a manufacturer keenly interested 
in industrial, economic, and labour problems, and 
watching the organization of the working-classes with 
the attention both of the observer and the well-wisher. 
He had borne away from the Ecole Poly technique the 
craving after plain clear truth so evident in the writings 
of Henri Poincare, and he spent years patiently recon- 
sidering his ideas, and cleansing, as he says, his mind 
from the sediment left on it by education. He led an 
independent, retired, disinterested life, and more and 
more his esteem went exclusively to truth and sincerity, 
while his hatred of half-lies or half-truths and his 
contempt of pretence increased accordingly. 

The results of this long course of meditations were a 
considerable number of communications to the Motive- 
ment Socialiste, a review of very high standing, which 
ultimately reappeared in book form. Of these five or 



Reaction Against Socialism 197 

six volumes, two are chiefly remarkable, and embody 
all the author's, not only experience, but very interest- 
ing temperament. One is Les Illusions du Pr ogres, an 
analysis of the historical formation of the deception 
known as Indefinite Progress, and the other is Re- 
flexions sur la Violence, an apology for heroism, even if 
associated with violence. In both volumes there was, 
latent or explicit, a detestation of Parliamentary So- 
cialism as represented by M. Jaures, and a keen sym- 
pathy with Syndicalism, which at the time was not yet 
in the hands of questionable ring-leaders. In fact, 
Socialism is nothing else than the vague — and conse- 
quently despicable — belief in Progress as inseparable 
from the Future. The idea that evolution is invariably 
for the better is a poor invention of the Encyclopaedists, 
which the no less poor average education popular 
through the nineteenth century spread among the 
working-classes. The success of Socialism was entirely 
built on the idea, that along with the development of 
science must come a development of civilization, and, 
eventually, the millennium promised by M. Guesde 
and M. Jaures. 

At the bottom of this notion was the exaggerated 
esteem of knowledge regarded as superior to moral 
worth, and the identification of the noble idea of 
civilization with mere material progress. After all, 
what was the ideal proposed to the workers by their 
Socialist leaders? A very poor one indeed. It meant 
little else than the hope of little work, much leisure, 
few moral obligations, and, in default of an eternal life, 
which coiild not exist, and was only a dangerous super- 
stition, a scale of enjoyments varying from a somewhat 
low materialism to the refinement of the artist. To 
this must the diffusion of lights lead some day, and to 



198 The Return of the Light 

nothing else; and that it could lead to thus much soon 
appeared very doubtful to all critical minds. 

Over against this philosophy the spirit of Syndicalism 
seemed of an incredibly nobler order. Whereas the 
Socialist ideal was nothing else than individual comfort, 
obtained almost passively by the combination of easy 
political methods with scientific development, the Syn- 
dicalist ideal was worthy of the name. It ignored in- 
dividuals, and was exclusively attentive to the class; it 
proposed power as its object, but it was power for an 
object which was represented as inseparable from jus- 
tice; it recommended violence, it is true, but how re- 
freshing such a violence was, compared with the 
Socialists* yearning after pleasure. For the Syndical- 
ist's violence was disinterested; it was, after all, a form 
of patriotism, in which the idea of class was substituted 
for that of a country; there was nothing demeaning in 
it. 

On the whole, M. Sorel was attracted by the Syndical- 
ists and repelled by the Socialists, because of a funda- 
mental preference in his mind for moral rather than for 
intellectual distinction. Civilization to him meant 
gentlemanliness rather than comfort. Like Loti, he 
had much more respect for an Arabian sheikh than for a 
politician with all the varnish of a course at the Sor- 
bonne. What he loved in the Syndicalists, as in the 
Jansenists, was the soldierly spirit and the aloofness 
from compromise. One felt that Syndicalism, with 
more results and less courage, would be indifferent to 
him. He loved heroism and cared little on what field 
heroism happened to display itself. 

It is strange that the solitary reflections of an obscure 
engineer, the friend of an obscure clerk, should have 
reintegrated into the French consciousness the idea of 



A New Mentality Produced 199 

heroism as lovable in itself which was for centuries one 
of its chief elements. Along with it there was a respect 
of truth and a disgust for mere words, a tendency 
towards practical organization as opposed to ranting, 
which were the very reverse of the politician's inborn 
taste for appearances. Wherever we find a criticism 
of the "philosophy of the belly, " or of the "philosophy 
of humbug," we have no difficulty in tracing it to the 
influence of M. Georges Sorel. 

The manifestations of the saner intellect of France 
which the six foregoing chapters recapitulate had, 
naturally, not passed unperceived. It was impossible 
that the criticisms of such men as Taine and Renan 
on such an event as the Revolution should not have 
been widely commented upon. The rise of literature 
from Naturalism to Idealism was also a transformation 
of which even the man in the street must be more or less 
aware. As to the effects of provincialist literature, or of 
the theories of M. Georges Sorel, I realize that readers 
unaccustomed to the deep influence which ideas wedded 
to a poetic or energetic expression have in France, 
will be doubtful of their importance. But this is one of 
the points about which familiar experience alone en- 
ables us to make up our minds. The fact is, that if 
it is true that no contemporary writer has enjoyed the 
position of Rousseau at the end of the eighteenth 
century, it is also true that literature as a whole is 
more productive of effects at the present day than it 
was at any other period of French history. At any 
rate, we see clearly that the ideas which between 
1880 and 1905 had slowly taken possession, some of 
one part of the public, some of another, reappeared, 
united and systematized, ready for daily use in num- 



200 The Return of the Light 

berless intellects when the Tangier shock created a 
powerful demand for right notions ordained towards 
right actions. 

This, and not merely a patriotic emotion, was the 
wonderful result of the awakening of 1905. Ask any- 
body worth while if there really is a change in French 
mentality. He may at first be satisfied with mention- 
ing the effects of the new spirit to which I shall presently 
come, but if you help him to analyse his impression as a 
Frenchman is always inclined to analyse it, the answer 
will eventually be: Yes, there is another spirit in 
France, and this spirit is one of lucidity, of diffidence 
against brilliant formulae, of latent sympathy with the 
national tradition; such a one, in a word, as had not 
been alive in the country in the same degree since the 
intellectual intoxication of the eighteenth century. 



SECTION III 

EVIDENCES OF THE NEW SPIRIT 

That the combination of roused patriotism with the 
deep intellectual modifications expounded in the pre- 
ceding section has produced tangible effects is a fact 
which nobody can seriously question. I shall now go 
into the examination of these actual manifestations, 
some of which appear instinctive, while the others will 
show us the conscious and reasoned aspect of the new 
spirit. 

DIVISION A. — INSTINCTIVE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE NEW 

SPIRIT 

I. A Patriotic Attitude Forced even on Internationalists 

At the beginning of the twentieth century the out- 
spoken expression of patriotism was rare; Dreyfusism 
was voted the last word of culture, and the numberless 
people with whom appearances count for more than 
principles were afraid to indulge in a sentiment which 
seemed belated and inelegant. The universally preva- 
lent certitude of peace and in the long run of a fusion of 
all nations caused patriotism to look unpleasantly like 
chauvinism, and the consciousness of this likeness re- 
stricted all but very reticent manifestations. 



202 The Return of the Light 

To-day the situation seems completely reversed. I 
need not revert to the revulsion caused by the Tangier 
affair in men capable of a generous emotion and equal 
to the conscience-examination generally invited by such 
an emotion; men of this stamp influence rather than 
exemplify public opinion. Nobody was very much 
surprised to see M. Clemenceau, for instance, fly the 
French colours just at the right moment and with the 
proper emphasis. It also seemed natural that a man 
like M. Andre Lefevre, till 1905 a Radical Socialist, 
should afterwards become pre-eminently a patriot. The 
real sign of the times was the transformation of less 
virile and more receptive intellects, sensitive to the 
pressure of opinion on the one hand and easily impressed 
on the other by the conviction of minds they feel 
superior to their own. In this respect nothing can rival 
the Press for impressionability. The newspapers are 
go-betweens gifted with wonderful tact and seldom 
running the risk of being unpopular or that of appearing 
behindhand. Now the contrast between the tone of the 
papers towards 1900 and that which they have gradu- 
ally adopted since 1905 cannot be exaggerated. The 
ultra-civilized way of approaching international ques- 
tions habitual in the days when M. Berthelot was 
possible as a Foreign Minister would be unbearable 
to-day even in the Lanterne. What a difference also 
between the M. Berenger we knew not so long ago, who 
advised us to tear the flags to pieces, and the present 
very sensible editor of U Action! Between the former 
editors of Le Rappel and M. Edmond du Mesnil! 
Papers of this shade at present affect a supercilious 
national sensitiveness, and frown and scowl at Germany 
on the least pretence with the best chauvins of fifteen 
years ago. As to the internationalist press, it is so low 



Patriotism on Internationalists 203 

upon the horizon that only professionals know where to 
find it. 

The amorphous politician shows the same transfor- 
mation. I have followed with as much interest as 
amusement the subtle though quick phosphorescences 
announcing modifications in the surroundings of young 
men like M. Herriot, the Mayor of Lyons, and M. 
Paul-Boncour, erewhile Minister of Fine Arts, both 
perfect samples of the rising politician with whom 
success means more than politics. How elegantly they 
managed to become patriots while retaining the touch 
of Socialism which was fashionable when they first 
launched in politics! How cleverly they colour the 
somewhat sickening stuff they retail! How daintily 
these consummate young actors let you infer by almost 
unperceived intonations that they only want to please 
you, but if you insist on being pleased with outspoken- 
ness, they are ready to be more outspoken. Indeed, 
such barometers are infallible. 

But more obvious indications of the change are not 
wanting. Is it not remarkable that the Socialist group 
in the Chamber, which once refused to discuss any 
question connected with the budget of war, is now ever- 
lastingly engaged on military technicalities? No general 
wrote or said so much about the driest details of mo- 
bilization as M. Jaures. A stranger might hear him for 
an hour in the Chamber without suspecting that he 
was not a nervous patriot, hypnotized by the dangers 
arising from an insufficient frontier line. Ten years 
ago such speeches would have seemed barbarous, in- 
sulting for neighbouring nations, and recklessly danger- 
ous for peace. To-day they are merely the proper 
expression of a feeling which it would be shameful to 
ignore. 



204 The Return of the Light 

The fact is, that whatever may have been, and may 
still be, the influence of M. Maurice Barr^s's view of 
patriotism as the noblest and richest of our emotions, 
there is another more powerful cause which compels 
even weaklings to declare themselves patriots. No 
motive acts so energetically cmi the French as the fear 
of a])pearing either ridiculous or cowardly. It seemed 
ridiculous before 1905 to speak of the possibilities of a 
war, because war was supposed to be impossible, and 
one ran the risk, by thinking the contrary, of being 
regarded either as a braggart or an uneducated lout. 
Tt>-day the ridicule is for people — there are still a few 
left — simple enough to believe, as Jules Simon did in 
1867, that France ought only to give the example of 
disarmament, to be followed by the rest of Europe, and 
the shame would be for those who might appear to 
dread war from personal considerations. This is quite 
enough to change the whole phiIosoi:)hy of war with the 
most independent spirits. The transformation was 
visible at the time of the Agadir incident in 191 1 ; the 
most resolute Syndicalists, men with whom interest 
counts less than an ideal, no matter how wrong some- 
times, in a moment forgot the pacifist theories they had 
lu>ld or heard for years, and were for taking up arms 
immediately. 

What is only an attitude with neutrally disposed 
individuals is a much deeper feeling with the bulk of the 
French nation. The trend of politics alone during the 
last few years is enough to prove it. Patriotism has 
gradually become one thing with the military precau- 
tions destined to safeguard the national independence 
of France, but these precautions having been first sug- 
gested by the Cabinets of M. Poincare, M. Briand, and 
M. Barthou, the political enemies of these gentlemen 



A European Point of View 205 

have thought it a good platform to advocate, on the 
contrary, an alleviation of military charges. The finst 
impression of patriots, therefore, was one of anxiety 
when they saw Radicals of the type of M. Doumergue 
and M. Viviani come into office. Were they not bound 
by solemn promises, taken at a plenary convention of 
their party at Pau, to move at once a reduction of the 
military service to a period inferior to three years? 
Yet nothing of the kind was done or even mooted. 
It is very well for a convention of politicians to devise 
a useful platform before an election, but the platform 
cannot be made the basis of a serious parliamentary 
action without the risk of mortally offending the coun- 
try. Nothing shows better the progress made by Prance 
in the direction of efficient patriotism than this im- 
possibility for demagogues to propose to the country a 
measure likely to flatter careless tendencies, but at the 
same time to alarm wide-awake watchfulness. 

2. Substitution of a European for a Party Point of View 

This is only another aspect of patriotism. When 
the Prench were absorbed in the welfare of the universe, 
they forgot to consider whether the interests of man- 
kind might not be in conflict with those of their own 
country. Now that the Drcyfusist philosophy has been 
found to lead, not to the liberty of all, but to a great 
danger of thraldom for its own apostles, the situation 
is reversed, and — as Vernon Lee wrote, in surprise and 
disgust, to the well-known philosopher, Paul Desjardins 
— the French watch the movements of Europe with so 
much attention, that they neglect all their former 
interests. It is not merely, as this lady said in the 
same letter, because they are engrossed by the thoughts 



2o6 The Return of the Light 

of a war, some fearing, others longing for it. It is 
rather because they have become conscious once more 
of political realities, and, in spite of six generations of 
Idealists behind them, see clearly that they have either 
to pay attention to trivial details, or make up their 
minds to be dupes for ever. This new attitude may 
be occasionally nervous, sometimes reluctant, but it is 
practically universal, and as we see the Socialists take a 
soldier's interest in things military, we also hear them 
frequently discuss economic or diplomatic questions 
with a great display of references to consular reports. 
It was not under the Combes government that the 
settlement of a minor difficulty with the customs of the 
United States could have been given so much attention 
as it received in the summer of 19 14. I noticed in a 
previous chapter the space which even popular news- 
papers now devote to such technicalities as those 
concerning the Bagdad railway or the Persian oil-fields. 
Many indications of the same interest could be found 
in the frequency of economic investigations, travels for 
an economic purpose, the predominance of commercial 
geography, or of questions relative to international law 
at examinations, etc. This kind of erudition, com- 
bined with the general patriotic feeling, has gradually 
brought about an attention to contingencies which, 
only a few years ago, we were inclined to regard as 
eminently English, but which is no surprise to the 
student of French diplomatic history from the days of 
Louis XII till those of Louis XV, and even of Louis 
Philippe. The spread of French civilization then was 
not left exclusively to the contagion of French culture. 
Whatever may be the ultimate results of this change 
of outlook, its present effects are certainly good. It 
makes for lucidity and decision, two qualities which, 



A European Point of View 207 

until the national mind was poisoned by humanitarian- 
ism, were looked upon as characteristically French. 
In this respect it is only one side of the steady return to 
tradition noticeable in so many other manifestations. 
But one immediate consequence of it ought to be con- 
sidered with special attention: I mean the decrease 
of party spirit, which intelligent patriotism kills as 
effectively as quinine kills fever. 

Here, of course, we find the stone of scandal on which 
many good Frenchmen and all the well-wishers of 
France abroad are sure to stumble. Everybody reahzes 
that devotion to the great interests of the coimtry is 
irreconcilable with petty divisions, and yet such divi- 
sions exist in France ; and every now and then they still 
fill the papers or the Parliamentary proceedings as 
they used to do towards 1900; they appeared scandal- 
ously at the time of the presidential election, at the 
Pau convention, in the overthrow of M. Barthou and 
M. Ribot, in the sly opposition made by M. Clemen- 
ceau, M. Caillaux, and M. Jaures to President Poincare, 
and they are evident whenever the least pretence makes 
it possible to give a theological tinge to any discussion. 

This is true. But in spite of its visibility, this 
anomaly is only important in appearance, and because 
the paradox of a Chamber with an unbalanced power, 
as I have said before, and shall have other occasions 
to repeat, must magnify all that relates to Parliamentary 
politics. In fact, the divisions of the Chamber are 
based less on dissimilarities of standpoint concerning 
important issues than on conflicting personal interests, 
and they result in talk rather than in tangible action. 
The danger of this jockeying would be evident, did it 
only result in loss of time, in bewildering the country, 
and puzzling foreign observers. But it is rather the 



208 The Return of the Light 

consequence of a bad system than an essential evil, 
like the inferior philosophy which once caused universal 
deterioration. In other countries political divisions 
inevitably lead to variations of policy. It is not dif- 
ficult to una^ine, for instance, how difTerent the history 
of Enj^iland in recent years would read had the Con- 
servatives been in olTice. But in France we saw M. 
Viviani carry on exactly the policy of M. Barthou, 
which as a deputy he constantly opposed. The wider — 
what we might call the European — point of view forces 
itself both upon the country and its Government, and 
party divisions only subsist as convenient watchwords. 
This appears evident in the attitude adopted by 
men of an independent spirit, whatever their political 
opinion may be, who cannot refrain from pointing out 
what strikes them as a ludicrous paradox. Very few are 
more interesting to lu^ar than M. Marcel Sembat. 
This gentleman is one of a few wealthy young men who, 
towards 1898, when Socialism was young and elegant, 
could not resist the attraction of the nc>w doctrine, and 
devoted their millions to the cause of M. Jaur^s. M. 
Sembat seldom influences the Chamber; he is too gay, 
too sarcastic, too sceptical about men, whether friends 
or foes, too detached from the cfTect his speeches might 
l)roduce, and all this gives him an appearance of super- 
itciality which warrants resistance on the part of 
deputies undoubtedly his inferiors, but who think them- 
selves more serious because they are less witty. Yet 
M. Sembat is none the less one of the clearest intellects 
there are in Parliament or in the Press, and although 
he never influences a vote, all that he says or writes 
is noticed and commented on. Now he is convinced 
that peace is better than war, and that progress can be 
conceived apart from (tMiitorial expansion — that is to 



A European Point of View 209 

say, he thinks that one day may conic when SociaHst 
humanitarianism will be sufficiently spread in Europe 
to serve as a basis for international relations. But 
whereas Dreyfusist politicians would act as if this state 
of affairs already existed, M. Sembat sees clearly that 
it is only a very remote hope, and that, meanwhile, war, 
whether offensive or defensive, must be a constant 
consideration in modern politics. Now, while French- 
men, grown up with the blinkers of party spirit univer- 
sal before 1905, would look upon the persistence of the 
Republican regime as a dogma to which even the ex- 
istence of the country ought to be made subservient, 
M. Sembat thinks, as practically every sensible person 
at present docs, that the question of the regime is a 
minor one in comparison with that of the national 
independence. In this state of mind he was not afraid 
to publish in the summer of 19 13 a volume defiantly 
entitled, Faites un Roi, sinon Jaites la Paix. Evidently 
he believed that the Republic has for its chief object 
the maintenance of peace, but he also realized that 
peace or war was not the free choice of Euro])c\'in 
nations at the present day, and he sacrificed the wliole 
fabric of his party to the exigencies of a higher policy 
than that of parliamentary groups. The book may not 
have promoted royalist propagandism as much as 
royalist writers imagined, but it was a powerful demon- 
stration of the complete change in outlook brought 
about by the danger revealed in 1905 and 1910, and as 
such its importance was considerable ; party as opi;)Oscd 
to patriotism, the Republic itself as placed over against 
France, are now things of a past, when the French lived 
like Leibnitz's monad, without any outside windows. 

The substitution of a European for a mere political 
standpoint is so deadly for petty considerations that 
14 



210 The Return of the Light 

we have seen it several times replace even religious 
questions in their true perspective and show that blind 
anti-clericalism may be as pernicious for France as 
anti-patriotism itself. This is no small achievement, 
for the idea of the Roman tyranny, with its escort of 
intellectual oppression and universal regress, is a long- 
lived bugbear. Two men who were never suspected of 
an exaggerated partiality for religion, M. Leygues and 
M. Frangois Deloncle — the latter of whom especially 
was long known as an active Freemason — ^have been 
able on various occasions to point out to the Chamber 
consequences of the complete separation from Rome 
which exposed its absurdity. The protectorate of Catho- 
lic missions which made the presence of the French flag 
a matter of course wherever there were Catholics in the 
East, was virtually abolished by the Separation Law, 
which its authors meant as a declaration of indifference 
to all religions, and since the enforcement of that law 
it has quietly passed over, according to circumstances, 
to Italy or Germany. In the same way, the law against 
religious orders was not intended for religious estab- 
lishments — according to Gambetta's principle that anti- 
clericalism is a bad export — but it was inevitable that if 
orders should be suppressed at home their nimibers 
would promptly decrease abroad. These alternatives 
were dwelt upon at considerable length by M. Leygues 
and M. Deloncle without any show on the part of the 
Chamber of the childish sensitiveness of yore, and for 
the first time since the suppression of the Embassy to 
the Vatican, a religious question coiild be discussed 
exclusively from the national point of view. I am 
aware that after that date the Government suppressed 
a number of religious establishments which had been 
tolerated since 1901, but this is only another instance 



Anachronism of So-Called Idealism 211 

of the opposition between the spirit of the country and 
the action of poHticians. The Government suppresses 
convents to reassure the Radical party on its tottering 
condition by creating in them the illusion that nothing 
is changed, and it will secretly support Catholic French 
schools at Beyrout or Jerusalem. 

3. Anachronism of So-called Idealist Manifestations 

Some people are impervious to all the reasons they 
might have to modify either their notions or their at- 
titude. They are not always unintelligent; they may 
be only obstinate — sometimes with great gentleness — 
or inattentive and dreamy or nervously enthusiastic. 
Almost in every case it is not difficult to account for 
their indifference to what is going on in the world by 
subtle interests blinding them to the logic of a situation. 
Whatever may be the reasons of their behaviour, it is 
inevitable that they should be few, that their influence 
should be small, and that a touch of perplexing singu- 
larity should be attached to what they say or do. 

This is the case with the rare groups of men one may 
still find, who have hardly modified their line since the 
Dreyfus ebullition. Such periodicals as Les Droits de 
VHomme, edited by the son of Pere Loyson, Les 
Documents du Pr ogres, Le Courrier Europeen, Les 
Cahiers d'Aujourd'hui, continue to think of France as 
pre-eminently the intellectual laboratory of the uni- 
verse; but how unimportant they have become since 
the not very long past days when their columns were 
the store-rooms of advanced thought ! What a feeling 
of sameness and staleness we experience whenever we 
have an occasion to look into them! How antiquated 
their effort to appear fresh and unconventional seems 



212 The Return of the Light 

to us, wedded as it almost invariably is with artistic 
or literary fornuikc of more than impressionistie so- 
phistication and about which we have long made up our 
minds. We know quite well that the restricted public 
which retains its belief in those performances may 
think itself distinguished, but rather deserves to be 
called eccentric. If one were to deduct from the 
subscription lists of these periodicals the names of 
foreign artists or foreign nondescripts, who will mistake 
the exceptional for the rare, of the Jews who cater for 
them, of the Bohemians who imagine or pretend they 
take an interest in novelties, there would be a very 
small number of real natives left. French taste and 
French conviction have been hopelessly alienated from 
hiuiianitarianism since it turned out to be profitable 
to everyone except France. In the last months of 
1913, two new magazines appeared, one of which, called 
Mcssidor, purported to be resolutely idealistic, and the 
other, called La Renaissance, stated its object to be all 
that can unite the French ; the difference of welcome in 
favour of the latter on the mere reading of advertise- 
ments was striking, in spite of brilliant and reassuring 
names on the staff of Mcssidor. 

All that recalls the dangerous vagueness or the 
gullible broad-mindedness of the years 1898- 1905 has 
become ridiculous or repellent; a Franco-German league, 
the Berne conference for peace, a committee for the 
erection of a statue to Robespierre, are all equally 
mocked or equally despised, and the general tendency 
is to suspect foreign influences in them. 

One fact can help the reader in measuring how far the 
French have progressed in the direction of lucidity and 
in antipathy against false positions; it is the distance 
between the literary and the patriotic estimation that 



Distrust of Parliament 213 

are made of two such men as M. Romiain Rolland, and, 
above all, M. Anatole France. Jean-Christophe would 
undoubtedly be a popular masterpiece if its atmosphere 
were not such as to invite at once a German translation. 
In spite of the author's resolute statement that "he 
has annexed Germany, " the readers will believe that he 
simply felt the fascination which Michelet had exjje- 
rienced before him and been annexed himself. As to M. 
Anatole France, he has lived long enough to become a 
sort of conundrum. It is disconcerting to find that the 
same man may have distilled the wisdom there is in 
such books as the Bergeret volumes or Les Dieux ont 
Soif, and ranted in a turgid manner at Socialist meet- 
ings; that a man who intellectually is so unmistakably 
French should put his name to anti-militarist posters 
or prefix it with Salut et fraternite. The writer who 
undou?jtedly represented in its highest perfection the 
charming dilettantism of 1890, the flower of French 
perversion, when this perversion was not supposed to be 
dangerous, is only at the present day really popular 
abroad. In his own country, strange as it may vsound, 
M. Anatole France is a fossil. 

4. Increased Distrust of Parliamentary Action 

The Chamber which, after long swaggering and 
hectoring, had finally to confess its helplessness in the 
settlement of the difficulties with Germany, and later 
in the repression of Syndicalist disturbances, and the 
Chamber — its immediate successor — which voted the 
raising of the deputies' salary, were regarded with 
undisguised contempt. Since then, the Chamber which 
went out in 191 4 did two things which somewhat 
reconciled the country to it, and created a better feel- 



214 The Return of the Light 

ing: it pnssed the Pn>portu>n;il Representation l^ill, 
whieli is a moral measure, and the Three-Year Serviee 
Bill, whieh was a necessity indeed, but could not be 
done without something like courage. The Chamber 
returned in May, 1914, has ratified the Three-Year 
Service Law, and it contains a fair proportion of deputies 
not unwilling to consider a reform of the Constitution, 
whieh would inevitably residt in a diminution of the 
Chamber itself. This again k)oks like eonseient ioustiess. 
It would seem, therefore, as if Parliament stood better 
chances in public opinion than it has hail for many 
years. 

But, on the other IuukI, the Chamber elected in 1914 
is in the power of the Radicals, as the rapid doom of the 
Ribot Covernment proved without any question, and 
what, are the Ivadieals in public estimation.'^ First of 
all, the enemies of M. Poincar^, who, at the time of his 
election at least, repivscntcii the best French tendencies; 
then the liars who declared themselves against the 
Three- Year Law at the Pau convention, and dare not 
abide b^'' their o\vn decision; finally the inquisitors into 
private fortunes who have abettcil the Socialists in the 
drawing up of the Income Tax Law. 

All this, joined to the consciousness, every four years 
strengthened, that the elections arc fundamentally 
insincere and invariably unintelligible, results in a 
feeling of deep mistrust which the recent importance 
taken by the Senate only increases. Until the presiden- 
tial election of 1013, the Senate brought on itself less 
of the aniuKuiversion gathering around the Chamber, 
'l^he l^pper Assembly lived in comparative obscurity 
and humility, and its dealings seemed hardly i)ublic. 
So while there was no sympathy for it, there was none 
of the antipathy which attached to the ravenous 



Syndicalism Checked 215 

Chamber. 'I7)is was changed in the spring of 1913, 
when the Senate did its best for the nonentity Pams 
against M. Poincar6, at a time when the country was 
pining for a man. Since then the impression has been 
that Parliament is less than ever the representation of 
the country, that a few influential persons there as 
everywhere else pull wires and regulate the whole loose 
machinery, and that a subtle hypocrisy enables the 
Chamber to pretend to do things which it knows the 
Senate will undo. So the prevalent feeling now, as in 
1905, is one of hesitation and mistrust of Parliament, 
with a greater consciousness of the impossibility of doing 
anything against it. 

Is not this disposition irreconcilable with the return 
of lucidity and energy which I regard as the fortunate 
consequence of the Tangier conversion? Not at all; it 
is only the uncomfortable sensation that there is some- 
thing hopelessly wrong in the Constitution. Under- 
neath this sensation there is the passionate longing for 
a change, which, in the first decade following 1875, 
would have been unthinkable, and the possibility of a 
sudden overthrow to which I vShall revert in the third 
part of this volume. The country can apparently do 
nothing aj^ainst its half-unconscious oppressors beyond 
wishing ff;r their disappearance, ?jut such a wish is a 
force in itself. 

5. Syndicalism Reduced to its True Proportions 

In the early years of the present century, Syndicalism 
appeared formidable. The trade unions, advised h>y 
Fernand Pelloutier, had taken advantage of the law of 
190 1 on Associations, not only to have their individual 
existence legally recognized, but to lay the foundations 



2i6 The Return of the Light 

of the vast federation known as the General Labour 
Confederacy. It seemed inevitable that a popular move- 
ment, revolutionary in its object, no doubt, but appar- 
ently justified by contingencies, and not illegal, should 
attract all the energies of the working-classes and spread 
to all the corporations. It seemed almost as certain that 
the Government of those days, resting largely on the 
Socialist vote, and Socialism not appearing as yet 
clearly distinguishable from Syndicalism, the number 
of Socialist deputies must promptly become large 
enough to make a revolution a matter of course. The 
postmen's and electricians' strikes, on the other hand, 
showed how powerful the Bourse du Travail had already 
become, and the negotiating attitude of M. Clemenceau 
and M. Briand, then Prime Ministers, meant the 
consciousness of impotence. So Syndicalism was the 
spectre before which everybody trembled. 

But here, too, the Tangier, and especially the Agadir, 
emotion brought a change. Syndicalism did not mean 
only a corporate movement; it amounted to anti- 
patriotism and anti-militarism. It seemed a certainty 
that in case of a war the Syndicates would obey the 
directions all ready at the Bourse du Travail, and oppose 
the mobilization. Now, after Agadir it turned out that 
the workers, even the Syndicalists, were, in an over- 
whelming majority, prepared to follow their military, 
rather than their labour leaders. A deeper reaction 
could not but follow, and it put the workmen on their 
guard against ring-leaders who, according to the recent 
avowals of one of them, Pataud, were only too inclined 
to go over to the bourgeois, just like the Socialists. As 
this coincided with the appearance of stronger govern- 
ments made necessary by the common danger, it soon 
appeared that the General Labour Confederacy had 



A Higher Moral Standard 217 

been more influential through the terror it inspired than 
through its real position, which, moreover, was now 
demonstrated to be decidedly illegal. Finally, in 19 13, 
anti-militarist propagandism having once more been 
denounced as coming from the Bourse du Travail* 
M. Barthou had the building searched, confiscated 
documents, and imprisoned several of the chief leaders, 
without raising any serious protest. Ten years before 
such an action would have been madness, to-day it 
appears common good sense. 

As a conclusion, the Syndicalist movement seems at 
present less revolutionary in France than it is in Eng- 
land, or in America, and one terrible ghost has been 
laid. In its place two very different fears — the anxiety 
over German progress and discomfort at the mis- 
management of the Senate and Chamber — have risen, 
and as they are founded on circumstances which can be 
fought and modified with much less difficulty, they are 
far less depressing. 

6. A Higher Moral Standard Forced on the Public Spirit 

The reader, in several of the following chapters — 
dealing with the younger generation, with the influence 
of the Church, and with contemporary literature — will 
find various indications of a return of the French to 
traditional morals, and even to religion as the most 
powerful element in the morality of a nation. But it 
would be misleading not to emphasize a transformation 
which, in spite of some hesitancy, is characteristic of 
the spirit I am describing. 

A moral lowering was inseparable from the intellec- 
tual deterioration which we have examined in the first 
part of this volume. Scepticism invariably results first 



21 8 The Return of the Light 

of all in elegant, and sooner or later in coarse cynicism. 
The passage from eighteenth-century persiflage to Revo- 
lutionary grossness was exactly repeated in the passage 
from the comfortable negations of the Second Empire 
to the moral vulgarity of the Third Republic. 

For years this admixture of intellectual indifference 
with moral looseness was in all Europe a scandal not 
only to goodness, which was natural, but also to igno- 
rance or hypocrisy, which made France seem to be in a 
worse condition than she was in reality. The French 
never struck careful observers as morally inferior to 
most European nations, but they knew no convention- 
ality, no outward restraint, and, as a consequence, they 
boldly denied the metaphysical basis of morals, paraded 
cynicism, professed themselves worse than they were 
when they happened to be bad, and smiled at their own 
goodness when they happened to be good. In short, 
they were the victims of low doctrines, no doubt, but 
above all, of a low tone. 

To-day this style has so entirely ceased to be fashion- 
able that it looks provincial even in the country, and 
the French show themselves sincere admirers of all 
moral elevation. They are not very good preachers as 
yet, because their education leaves them convinced 
that preaching only belongs to deep religiousness, and 
because the national thoroughness prevents them from 
attempting what they feel they can do only in part. 
But wherever they see a good doctrine or a good 
example they recognize it, and they do their best to 
extirpate a few shortcomings which used to give special 
ofifence. Every newspaper speaks against depopulation 
and advocates legal action against its apostles; the 
long-tolerated indulgence of the juries for crimes 
passionnels is so frequently inveighed against that in 



A Higher Moral Standard 219 

the long run the protest must create a wholesome 
severity; even the looseness which attracts so many 
foreigners to a few Parisian theatres has lost its de- 
fenders; the so-called artistic excuses which used to be 
put forward to keep up certain exhibitions are never 
heard with so much sarcastic scepticism as when they 
come from apparently convinced people. The censor- 
ship has been abolished, but the very papers that used 
to mock and rally it, set the police in motion to do the 
work it once did so badly, whenever there is a serious 
reason for it. 

We are still far from a healthy degree of austerity, 
without which nations fall easy preys to moral diseases ; 
the whole atmosphere emanating from commercial or 
industrial as well as literary activity, that which trans- 
pires through conversations, and is understood under 
every printed statement, is a wish for easy, independent 
living, with enough money to make to-day enjoyable 
and to-morrow secure. But if people thus stand for the 
vie large, they have ceased to stand for the vie Ubre. 
Loose principles no longer seem inevitably associated 
with the possession of fortune; the complete failure of 
Le Phalene, the play of M. Bataille, conceived in an 
atmosphere undoubtedly superannuated, was a proof 
of this. 

As to the reasons, they are many and complex. 
But the two causes which we discover at the end of all 
the mental avenues we happen to enter in this investiga- 
tion are visible here as everywhere else. In the first 
place, a better philosophy, based on a more thorough 
criticism of principles once welcomed as scientific, has 
restored a metaphysical value to the moral instincts 
of mankind, and, in the second place, a sane pragma- 
tism arising from the necessity of giving food and 



220 The Return of the Light 

support to collective as well as to individual courage, 
compels the man who champions good citizenship to 
promote at the same time a moral creed without which 
self-denial is impossible or transient. To this extent 
can we say that the national awakening has produced 
ethical revival. 

7. Anomaly of the Stage Considered 

It has been too ready an assumption with some 
writers that life and the drama are parallel, and that 
the morality of the modern world can be inferred from 
that of its theatre. Printed instances are numerous. 
J. J. Weiss, an admirable dramatic critic, too much 
forgotten already, though he was at his zenith twenty- 
five years ago, has entitled one of his volumes Le Thedtre 
et les Mceurs; another volume by a clever and witty 
though rather superficial barrister, M. de Saint-Auban, 
is called L'Idee Sociale au Thedtre; another, written by 
M. Francois Veuillot, almost exclusively from the 
religious standpoint and very sound in many ways, 
approaches dramatists as Les Predicateurs de la Seine. 
All these works assume more or less explicitly that a 
modern play being a slice of life, if you bring enough 
of these slices together you will have a very nearly 
complete image of modem life, and if you disengage 
their points of view, you will obtain something like the 
modern man's philosophy. 

Nothing is apparently so like daily reality as the 
play ; the language we hear in the theatre is our common 
slang in all its stages of refinement or coarseness; the 
ideas, the prejudices, the manners of theatrical charac- 
ters must be like those of the people we meet in real 
houses, or we damn the play as turgid or sentimental. 



Anomaly of the Stage 221 

We resent any intrusion of the dramatist into the 
actions and utterances of his creations, and we imagine 
that the numberless histrionic attempts which year 
after year succeed one another must exhaust the situa- 
tions possible to our contemporaries. Curiously enough, 
we conceive no mistrust against the veracity of play- 
wrights from their occasional indulgence in the apo- 
logues called pieces d, theses, or plays with a purpose. 
Their frequent awkwardness gives us no misgivings, 
and their confidence, that of the prefaces with which 
they are generally published, that of the critics who 
discuss them gravely in the newspapers, only confirms 
us in the belief that the stage mirrors the world. It is 
only when we look attentively into some considerable 
portion of the dramatic production that we find out that 
plays are hardly ever written for our enlightenment, 
but merely for our amusement ; that their outlook is as 
restricted as that of the short stories in the magazines; 
that they are beset on all sides with conventionalities 
and cramped by the narrowness of the stage; that 
the so-called theses are mostly another effort to give 
the plays actualite; the philosophical disquisitions of the 
critics on their import inane verbosity or sheer humbug, 
and the so-called ex-professo books on the ethics of 
the stage strings of forgotten articles reprinted under 
fallacious titles. Then you realize that you would be 
more than imprudent to seek the standard of a nation's 
morality exclusively or even principally in its dramatic 
literature, and you modestly limit yourself to taking 
stock of what the play really holds of current ideas and 
modern situations, without hoping to rival in any way 
a judicious collection of faits-divers from the penny 
newspapers. There are cartloads of mere literature 
in these professedly objective productions. The moral 



222 The Return of the Light 

influence of the old comedy was summed up in the 
Latin phrase: Castigat ridendo mores, and that of the 
tragedy in the notion which some Goethean heroine 
had formed to herself of a good romance — viz., a book 
with characters one would like to resemble. To-day 
our playwrights want to be regarded as philosophers 
and directors of conscience. I once saw with no little 
surprise a Latin volume of Casuistry in the hands of a 
young friend of mine. "Are you tormented in your 
soul?" I asked. "No," replied he, "I am looking for a 
dramatic theme. " But before fifteen years are over he 
may give moral consultations to deferential journalists. 
He will be in the right of it; playwrights sit side by 
side with jurists in the committees for marriage reforms. 
They have taken the place of bishops in the councils 
of the commonwealth, as physicians replace the con- 
fessors in family consultations. Alexandre Dumas, 
junior, with just a mite of his father's genius, was the 
first Frenchman who played this role with perfect 
seriousness. He wrote plays which were technically 
good and morally daring — that is to say, doubtful; he 
appended to them prefaces which were generally much 
better than the plays; when, in his preface to VEtran- 
ghe, in 1879, he stood as a conservative against the 
radicalism of Zola, his ethics got the credit of his 
literature, and he was well-nigh looked upon as a 
Father of the Church. 

Some ten years later the French discovered Ibsen, 
and their pleasure in the discovery doubled their 
belief in the play with a far-reaching moral import. 
Inferior snobbism immediately disported itself in sym- 
bolism, while the superior kind resulted in Maeter- 
linckian adaptations. But the credit of the theatrical 
moralists became greater and greater, and several of the 



Anomaly of the Stage 223 

rising young playwrights did not take the trouble to 
conceal their ambitions, and boldly began to preach at 
once. 

M. Hervieu is the least sophisticated of all. His 
dramas are simply apologies or demonstrations, and he 
does not mind if the rough side of his tapestry is as 
visible as the other. In order to show that the old 
adage, Verba volant, is right only when the words are 
kind or at least indifferent, he writes Les Paroles 
Restent, a real charade, in which we see a woman ruined 
by an imprudent speech of a man who afterwards does 
all he can, but in vain, to redeem his inconsiderateness- 
The title of the play is quite superfluous; the least 
attentive spectator would supply it at a second's notice 
if it were missing. M. Hervieu is clearness itself. He 
is a great feminist, and looks upon our Code as bar- 
barously partial for the men. He just picks up some 
text in it and embodies it in a dramatic action destined 
to show its absurdity. In Les Tenailles it will be the 
article which empowers the husband to conduct the 
education of his children. We shall see a man and 
woman fighting over a delicate boy whom the husband 
wants to send to school while his consort refuses. Such 
scenes happen every day, and Captain Marryat has 
painted one in an immortal manner in the first pages of 
Mr. Midshipman Easy without troubling his head about 
any sort of philosophy. But M. Hervieu makes his case 
highly dramatic by letting us know that the husband 
is not the father of his son, and by turning in conse- 
quence the wife into a martyr at once. In La Loi de 
VHomme it is another aspect of the same situation. 
An exquisite woman, Madame de Raguais has to live 
with her husband, a low creature, because she cannot 
legally establish his unworthiness — of which, however, 



224 The Return of the Light 

she is sure — and she must bear to see her daughter 
marry the son of her husband's mistress because the 
wretch takes the side of the impassioned girl. 

When you read a drama of M. Hervieu's you see both 
the tragic action and the legal demonstration proceed 
together step after step with infallible and geometrical 
precision, and you realize that, whatever legal possibil- 
ity you might give to M. Hervieu to treat, he would in 
a minute carry it on to the stage with counts and coun- 
tesses instead of the Caiuses and Titiuses of the old 
ethical treatises. But are we convinced by his precise 
machinery? Not at all. We leave the theatre with our 
old impression that everything is not right here below, 
far from it, but it is wise after all that the head of a 
family should be entitled, at least in theory, to final 
decisions on serious issues. The drama lives on in- 
dividual cases, laws are just the reverse. 

The method of M. Brieux is less rigid than that of 
M. Hervieu; we feel less while seeing his plays that we 
are in the hands of a school teacher who will not let us 
go until we know our lesson thoroughly, but his inten- 
tion is even more decidedly to reform modem society. 
Blanchette is an indictment against the hypocrisy of the 
so-called encouragement given to primary education. 
We persuade a girl that if she succeeds in taking a 
degree she will inevitably be successful, and will at 
once rise above the station to which she belonged; but 
when she has secured the precious parchment she finds 
herself not above but out of her class, and need drives 
her to the worst extremities. M. de Reboval is the story 
of a senator who thinks himself a politically unim- 
peachable character, and privately a model of virtue, 
because he has managed to keep up two homes without 
causing any scandal. The whole fabric of his life comes 



Anomaly of the Stage 225 

to grief when his son in home No. i falls in love with 
his daughter in home No. 2. Les Trois Filles de M. 
Dupont shows the necessity in which girls are nowadays 
not to marry or to marry beneath them if they have no 
money; no novelty, to be sure, but the play is an 
admirable drama. La Robe Rouge — M. Brieux's great- 
est success — is a violent attack upon the magistracy. 
A minor judge in some provincial court has no other 
dream than to don the red gown of the high councillor 
in Paris. By extraordinary good luck a murder is com- 
mitted in his district, and he feels sure that if he can 
find and convict the murderer his promotion is certain. 
In fact he hunts down the supposed assassin with the 
ferocity of a bloodhound. Les Remplagantes is a scath- 
ing criticism of the frivolous Parisian women who will 
not nurse their children — I mean their one child — 
themselves, and who trust its life to a woman "from 
whose glass they would never drink, " without reflecting 
that the woman has left her own baby and her husband 
in a far-away village, and that through their selfish 
indulgence a home has been broken up. 

M. Brieux has treated the question of divorce in 
three or four plays — Le Berceau, La Deserteuse, Su- 
zette — invariably from the feminist point of view in- 
herited from Alexandre Dumas. The future of the 
children seems to him the chief question to consider, 
and he thinks that no household where there is a child 
ought ever to be broken up, but that if this catastrophe 
actually happens, the children must be left with their 
mother, whose claims upon them are supreme. Other 
plays deal with Parliamentary corruption, with the 
betting mania among the poorer classes, with a certain 
foolish respectable reticence, etc. M. Brieux is scared 
by no object. 

IS 



226 The Return of the Lieht 



& 



Beside this revolutionist, with a great deal of latent 
Christianity in him, we can place M. Paul Bourget, 
who has become harshly traditional as he has become a 
practising Catholic. His plays are quite as successful 
as his novels, but they are very different from his early 
productions, so subtle and tender. He takes invariably 
the side of the strong and narrow-minded if they happen 
to have tradition on their side, and advocates his 
ideas in apparently solidly built dramas. In Le Divorce 
it is the disruption of a man and wife's happiness 
because the wife, after years of untroubled bliss, has 
religious scruples about her husband's previous divorce; 
in L' Emigre it is the r61e of the aristocracy in our mod- 
ern society; in La Barricade it is the class-fight, and in 
Le Tribun it is the impossibility for a politician to be 
true at the same time to his Socialist principles and 
to his paternal instincts. Wherever the exponents of 
the individualism invented by Rousseau and made 
popular by the Revolution speak of the rights of man, 
M. Bourget comes forward full of the rights of society, 
and showing that they can be maintained only by the 
sacrifice of individuals. If you are rich, strong, and 
contented, M. Bourget's plays will give you reasons 
for putting up with the woes of your less fortunate 
brethren ; if you are weak, ill-treated, and unhappy, you 
had better keep away from his theatre. 

To these three best-known stage preachers one 
might add M. Mirbeau, M. Ancey, M. Descaves, and a 
few others of less note. Most dramatists go the ways 
of novelists, and as age and fortune come to them they 
feel a growing propensity towards moralizing. 

Have you an impression that any of the subjects I 
have mentioned is likely to cause consideration among 
the public, even among playgoers? Or do you feel, on 



Anomaly of the Stage 227 

the contrary, that all that may be interesting, but 
the proper time for discussing it is after dinner in a 
smoking-room, while morals, real morals, are reserved 
for private meditation? To ask the question is to an- 
swer it. Nobody will get very much excited over the 
situation of school teachers, or the laziness of society 
women, or the corruption of politicians, or the ante- 
diluvian difficulty of marrying off girls sans dot, or the 
grievous faults of Dame Justice, or the grievances of 
the French aristocracy. One knows that a good 
deal of what is wrong here below is inherent in 
some fundamental wrongness, and that the rest has 
such deep and intricate roots that it is difficult to pluck 
up the principal one. The notion is a philosophy in 
itself. 

What people take a real and living interest in is 
tangible, and not academic. If the high cost of living 
could be clearly and dramatically exposed on the stage, 
the play would be a tremendous success. Write against 
the Yorkshire schools or the meat-packing scandals, 
you secure an audience at once, and the indignant feel- 
ing you raise does more than forty years' work. Or 
take advantage of some transient but very warm 
emotion, and have Electra performed in Spain, or some 
anti-militarist play in Paris at the right moment; you 
are sure of endangering several lives and shaking various 
institutions. 

If you go to history and inquire what dramas with a 
purpose have ever been effectual, you will invariably 
find that they summed up and voiced some diffused 
impression, not always the one which the dramatist 
wanted to make use of. La Dame aux Camelias aimed 
at being a denunciation of Philistine hypocrisy; and 
it was that, no doubt, but it was, above all, the signal 



228 The Return of the Light 

of a conscious and henceforth avowed indulgence for a 
certain class of women. Les Avaries, by M. Brieux, 
was also intended to be an apology for outspokenness 
about a very delicate and terrible subject, but the feel- 
ing it produced was selfish and cynical. Whenever an 
idea is in the air the least spark will make it flash. 
When it is not, no amount of tragical preaching will 
create it. That is why, after all, successful dramas 
with a purpose are first good comedies or tragedies, no 
matter what their purpose may be, and it is foolish, if 
one wishes to be informed of the preoccupations abroad 
in a country, to go to the theatre; the right place is the 
roadside inn. 

It is another matter if, instead of being in quest of a 
list of widely-discussed issues capable of being put down 
in a note-book and eventually in a newspaper, one is 
anxious to come at the innermost soul of a nation, at the 
something impalpable which with individuals is felt 
rather than seen in the smile or in the tone of the voice, 
and with communities constitutes what is called their 
spirit or manners. Of this dramatists are admirable 
though very partial exponents. They are, they have 
to be, men of tke world, and their vocation, as their 
success, lies in their aptitude to reproduce the gestures 
of the world, what modern parlance terms in a very 
distorted and restricted sense — life. 

What is the characteristic of the life we can see in the 
most famous works on the modern stage? It is unfortu- 
nately too easy to say. The knowledge of the age, its 
activities, its peculiar courage, its manifold aspirations, 
are all there, but never as the chief interest; they are 
only the background or the frame. The centre of 
interest for the dramatist is at present exclusively love. 
And let there be no mistake; the love which we see 



Anomaly of the Stage 229 

night after night on the Parisian stages has long ceased 
to be the high feehng productive of noble actions which 
it was inexhaustibly in mediaeval literature; it is a 
passion, all violence and selfishness, possessing its vic- 
tim so entirely that we can never know anything about 
her or him, through four or five acts, except that he or 
she is on the verge of insanity. 

Here it is evident that dramatic literature is not 
only the picture of life, but one of its factors. The 
drama combines with modern art, modern music, and 
practically every materialization of modern sensibility, 
to make a daily and all-the-year-round phenomenon of 
what nature had intended as a transient condition. It 
is not in vain that all we hear and see conjures up the 
same ideas; given a state of society in which idleness 
and eternal self -analysis are the rule with leisured 
people, these people must exasperate the string on 
which they are for ever harping. This, in fact, is the 
result which we see attained in all artificial lives, whether 
real or imaginary; one consciousness dominates all the 
others, and it is the sexual one. 

This being the case, it is not surprising that what 
used to be called the storms of passion, the gathering 
violence of love, its crises — jealous or otherwise — its sud- 
den ending, have vanished from attention. When the 
curtain rises on a play of M. de Porto-Riche, M. Ba- 
taille, M. Bernstein, or any of their numerous imitators, 
we know that the heroine will be at least in the condition 
of the Phedre of Racine, and we have no illusion as to 
what we may expect. No chance of any deep-running 
passion which might be everlasting, but might also be 
mute. Fehris est libido nostra. The Didos we see may 
easily commit suicide if they are given up by their 
loves — nothing in their state of mind is more likely; 



230 The Return of the Light 

but if their love dies, a strong instinct tells us that they 
will soon marry again. 

M. Georges Riche — generally known as De Porto- 
Riche — was the initiator of the drama based on this 
kind of passion. He is no benefactor of mankind, to be 
sure, but he ought not to be classed along with the 
common corrupters whose sole object is success. His 
latest play, Le Vieil Homme, performed in March, 191 1, 
brought forth enthusiastic praise, which such a glar- 
ingly immoral piece did not deserve, but also a storm of 
abuse, which the author did not deserve either. M. de 
Porto-Riche is a true artist. He has begun as a poet, 
and nobody is more fastidious about his workmanship 
than he is. His enemies make fun of his everlasting 
delays in the production of his pieces, but artistic 
scrupulousness is so rare nowadays that it ought to be 
encouraged and not laughed at. Certainly M. de 
Porto-Riche came, in one of his plays, Amoureuse, very 
near the perfection, not of Racine, as some people will 
say, but of Marivaux. Unfortunately the tact of the 
man is not so fine as that of the writer. M. de Porto- 
Riche has the modern Jew's inevitable propensity 
towards the doubtfully rare, the unhealthy exceptional, 
and the sweetness of his honeysuckle is not enough to 
cover other smells from his mould. The naturalness, 
vivacity, and wit of his dialogue, the Parisian charm of 
his women, the poetical atmosphere which he spreads 
over his creations, will not redeem his fame. When 
French literature recovers — as another chapter shows 
that it will — its former healthiness, M. de Porto-Riche 
will be remembered as the first man who managed 
to make conjugal love look impure, and built a whole 
play, Le Vieil Homme, on a painfully equivocal situa- 
tion summed up in this speech of a wife and mother to 



Anomaly of the Stage 231 

her husband: "Your son is in love with your mistress." 
The sadness which fills those brilliant, sparkling plays, 
the idea that love brings a special Nemesis along with 
it, is not enough to make them moral. The morality 
one would be apt to gain from a prolonged familiarity 
with these works is pure nihilism; get as much out of 
life as it can possibly give you, and VN^hen it has nothing 
left to tempt you, turn your back upon it. 

M. Bataille and M. Henry Bernstein are the im- 
mediate disciples of M. de Porto-Riche; they have his 
belief in the fatalism of passion, his cynicism — I trans- 
late the word fearlessness generally used — in taking it 
for granted, and his dangerous tenderness in watching 
its effects; but M. Bataille is even more refined than his 
master in the notation of subtle corruption; and M. 
Bernstein has rapidly made a reputation for his capacity 
in imagining and handling harrowing scenes of violence. 
M. Bataille is the historian of the women of forty who 
fall in love with the school friends of their son, aged 
nineteen; or of the ageing courtesans whose sons, 
hearing that they are on the eve of being given up by 
their protector, suddenly appear on the scene and 
frighten the truant into loyalty by means perfectly 
impossible to tell. M. Bernstein makes studies from 
the same kennel, but his low heroes are always on the 
point of committing suicide, or of being irreparably 
disgraced, or of having with their parents horrible 
scenes in which they dare and insult them. You go out 
of these spectacles with well-nigh shattered nerves, but 
that is exactly the sensation which some people are in 
quest of. 

It is needless to say that there is no trace whatever of 
moral beauty in these plays. It seems to be one of the 
most recognized dramatic principles of the day that 



232 The Return of the Light 

true nobleness of life or feeling does not exist, or exists 
so exceptionally as to be totally unconvincing on the 
stage. Stupidity — invariably relieved by the author's 
own wit — hypocrisy, falseness, selfishness, and cruelty 
in every form are the staple of what is called Le Theatre 
Rosse; that is to say, the deliberate expression — occa- 
sionally heard even at the Comedie Frangaise — of the 
basest tendencies in the human soul. The dark corners 
which the classic writers did not ignore, but to which 
they barely alluded, are emptied out in the full blaze of 
the lights. M. Abel Hermant with icy-cold bitterness, 
M. Courteline with a curious admixture of good-nature 
and irony, are the chief representatives of this heartless 
satire. 

As a contrast we find the plays of M. Lavedan and 
M, Donnay, which probably picture best the aspects 
of society on which modern drama seems mostly to live, 
and the philosophy with which our contemporaries 
generally regard them. 

M. Lavedan and M, Donnay are the painters of idle 
high life, and as such they are the lineal successors of a 
woman on whom a considerable portion of this light 
literature depends, Madame de Martel, better known 
as Gyp. The characters we see in their plays, as in 
Gyp's dialogues and novels, are mostly butterflies, with 
not enough consistency to be capable of real wickedness, 
but butterflies that had lived in the vicinity of a colony 
of much coarser beings and caught their language. 
When we try to remember the flimsy, brilliant creatures 
which fill those hundreds of volumes, numerous as they 
are, we see only a few types always the same ; the man of 
prey who brings all his energies to bear on the one 
object, to please himself in everything; younger men 
whom he trains for the same career or occasionally 



Anomaly of the Stage 233 

fleeces mercilessly and smilingly; mere boys who are 
already so tired of the game that they speak like old 
men with perfect naturalness; old men who are pun- 
ished, in Joubert's phrase, "for loving women too much 
by loving them too long," and cry over their lost 
pleasures like disappointed boys; women risen from 
nothing into the semblance of something, viewing life 
sometimes with the rapacity, sometimes with the reck- 
lessness, of the people, and perfectly destitute of moral 
sense. Whether we think of Le Nouveau Jeu, or Le 
Vieux Marcheur, or Le Marquis de Priola, or Education 
de Prince, or even Amants, it is the same thing, and one's 
ears are full of Folly's bells. The scenes we remember 
are those on which the curtain rises in nine out of ten 
plays, till we are sick of them — suppers at Montmartre, 
very unhealthy seaside places, suspicious boudoirs. 
The philosophy is always the same, too, complete 
cynicism so reckless that it ends by turning against 
itself and sounding like sincerity. As to the language 
which those flitting shadows speak, it is worthy of 
them; assisted by professional word-handlers — writers 
and artists — they have created a peculiar dialect which 
is better than a slang, both coarse and elegant, blend- 
ing Maupassant with Marivaux, searching, accurate, 
subtle, winged, and elusive, and yet worse than cynical^ 
full of quick allusion, ungrammatical, punning, and 
cheap, but as picturesque as mediaeval French. 

The true influence of the plays written after these 
models lies less in the contagiousness of the characters — 
perfectly inimitable for whoever is not both young and 
rich — than in this remarkable quality of their language. 
As I said above, writers copy it, but they improve it, 
and thousands of Parisians or would-be Parisians do in 
the theatre what M. Lavedan does in the various 



234 The Return of the Light 

milieus he haunts; they take careful note of what 
phrases strike them as Hkely to astonish or dazzle the 
uninitiated, and they retail them to their friends. The 
pity is that this means attitudinizing, and a pose of 
this kind entails the very easy imitation of the senti- 
ments it presupposes. Most of the so-called Parisian 
corruption is only a varnish of words on the thinnest 
veneer of materialism, but many people are too weak, 
when once they have learned imitation, to be themselves 
ever again, and it takes a new current of opinion to 
sweep the puppets out of the way. 

The difference between M. Lavedan and M. Donnay 
is very slight. The former has evident contempt for his 
paltry heroes; scorn is diffused through all his books, 
even those in which he has no chance of moralizing ; and 
his play, Le Duel, as well as a great portion of his non- 
dramatic productions, shows that his philosophy differs 
widely from that of his models. But he is not free from 
a certain subtle weakness which causes him to affect 
excessive indulgence, and has recently decoyed him 
into writing a frankly immoral comedy, Le Gout du Vice, 
when he wanted to satirize modern laxity. 

M. Donnay has the same indulgence, rendered more 
dangerous by the charm he gives to his women, and by 
an evident propensity towards moral anarchism from 
which M. Lavedan is free. He has lived too early in 
the near vicinity of the mad set he describes not to find 
it impossible to shake off all that he has caught from 
them. Yet he has his philosophy too: the gentle 
melancholy inevitably found in epicures. Life is fasci- 
nating, love is intoxicating, but life and love are fleeting 
and leave sadness behind them. The heroes of M. 
Bernstein disappear with the bitterness of hatred and 
disappointment in them; those of M. Donnay survive 



Anomaly of the Stage 235 

with a taste of soured honey for ever in their mouths. 
This too is copied by thousands of poetic snobs, and 
many a retired coquette who sighs distinguished epi- 
curean stoicism behind her fan, only recites bits from 
Donnay. 

The characteristic of the plays of M. Lavedan, 
M. Donnay, and, I ought to add, M. Capus — whose 
optimism and good humour are a clever counterfeit of 
real health — ^is the contrast between the ready wit of the 
characters in them and their invariable moral medio- 
crity. Most of these people would be charming after- 
dinner companions, none could make a real mate in life. 
As to their creators themselves, superior as we realize 
they are to their puppets, they are too eclectic in their 
sympathies, too ready to see the pros and cons even in 
moral difficulties in which a healthily trained mind 
would see only one course, too superficially intelligent, 
in short, to be of much use for whoever seeks more than 
the amusement of an evening. Even the best of us want 
more than a knowing shrug of the shoulders or winking 
of the eye to be held above the low waters of modern 
society. 

Are there then no theatres where we can find "people 
we would like to resemble"? Yes, but they are few. 
For years the historical plays which will never cease to 
appeal to the eye and the soul reminded us that the 
theatres used to be the home of heroic sentiments. 
Plays like La Fille de Roland, by Gaston de Bornier, 
were far more effective morally than the best- 
constructed pieces d theses. A great deal of even Sar- 
dou's reconstitutions had a value of the same kind ; and 
if M. Rostand had chosen to draw on that vein which 
was so rich in him rather than on his imagination, he 
had an undoubted gift for expressing the peculiar 



236 The Return of the Light 

quality of French courage. Nobody could see dramas 
from the braver epochs of our national history without 
being conscious of present inferiority. But even the 
historical play has gradually been tainted by the canker- 
ing materialism which literature calls realism. The 
tendency is to treat it not as a drama, but as an anec- 
dote — very much in the tone of M. Lenotre's fascinating 
books, and the results are not always good. If you 
asked M. d'Annunzio why he made an immoral work of 
the story of Saint Sebastian, he would no doubt tell you 
that it was out of respect for truth. 

Between the drama proper and the play with a pur- 
pose there is room for another kind of play working 
at the same time on the brain and the heart of the spec- 
tator, and which, in defaiilt of a better word, one can 
call the idealist play, the development of a high idea or 
a noble feeling. It is remarkable that in this age of 
scepticism and hardly-disguised selfishness these echoes 
of the teaching of old are enthusiastically welcomed, 
not only by the critics, but even by average audiences. 
M. Lavedan's greatest success was undoubtedly Le 
Duel, which stands out among his works as a fine old 
residence sometimes appears among tinsel seaside villas ; 
it is the story of a priest, once a man of the world, who 
kills the last germs of self-love in himself. The dramatic 
work which caused most sensation in the last few years 
was an awkwardly built but highly thought and nobly 
written drama, Les Affranchis, by Mademoiselle Leneru. 
This play, from the technical point of view, was rather 
poor, and if we lived at an epoch in which moral greatness 
was not considered a literary fault, it would have taken 
the second or third rank, but in these barren days of real- 
ism it appeared as a piece of Platonic beauty. The 
critics spoke of it with exceptional respect, which in itself 



Anomaly of the Stage 22i'] 

would have been significant enough, but this was not all ; 
the play was one of those which M. Antoine used to 
produce at the Odeon "out of sympathy for young 
dramatists" — that is to say, in plainer language, 
because he was paid to be charitable for unknown 
talents — and it was to be performed only once, or at 
most twice; in fact, it had to be given over and over 
again, and before a month was over, it had found its 
way into the regular repertoire. Clearly the inspiration 
of an inexperienced artist had joined a reaction of the 
public taste at the right moment. 

But the already established and still growing fame 
of another independent playwright ought to have long 
pointed out to dramatic writers that modern audiences 
have a surfeit of love, or even of brilliantly varnished 
realism, and crave something else. It is nearly twenty 
years since the admiration of all competent judges 
and the surprised enthusiasm of the public for two plays, 
entitled VEnvers d'une Sainte and Les Fossiles, made 
the name of M. Frangois de Curel known and deeply 
respected. The example of this pre-eminently honest 
writer could be proposed to the most ambitious as well 
as to the most sincere. A descendant of an ancient 
Lorrainese family, he might have lived a luxurious life, 
but he chose to follow the career — very far from smooth 
in France — of an engineer. Endowed with powerful 
dramatic faculties, he might have achieved highly 
popular success; he courted supreme distinction. He 
always chose the narrow way in everything. He lives 
mostly in the country, in his native district, dreaming 
his dreams, waiting for real inspiration, indefatigably 
writing and rewriting his works without any attention 
to outward suggestions. The result is first of all a 
private life eloquent in itself, and in the second place a 



238 The Return of the Li^ht 



^-.' 



lilorary pixulurtioii wliii^h is not. fault less hut wliirh 
compels ailuiiratiou. 

The faults of M. de Ciu'el are iutiinately connected 
with his qualities. Tie bears his creations so Icmij^ in his 
mind that tluy all idtimately bcn-row something of his 
ways of Ihiukinj^ ai\d t^xprossiui; iniusclf; thi>ir language 
is tuit by any means bombastic, but its simplicity could 
be at tained only by exceedingly relincil, iulelligent, and 
noble recluses who spent their lives in uuHlitation and 
spoke only on great occasions. It has something 
rhetorical in its spirit, as there is oratt>iv in the general 
expression of the plays IhiMnselves. This may be part 
of the peculiar pin\er o'i the dramatist, but it rcH|uircs a 
certain co-operation from the spectator which the latter 
is not always disposed to give. 

However, the necessary harmony between the author 
and his audience once established, M. dc Curel's plays 
appear as rare productions in which we discover mider 
every sentence the presence of a poet, a i^sychologist, 
aiul a philosopher, master of a singularly noble expres- 
sion and an aristocrat in the true meaning of the phrase. 
M. de Curd is as incapable of imagining a low char- 
acter and a common plot as others may be incapable 
of the reverse. His natural bent is towards heroism. 
A brief sketch of one of his best-known works, Lcs 
Fossilcs, w\\\ give an idea of his mamicr. The scene 
is an old chateau, in which an aueienl family is slowly 
dying away with only the pride of its name to give it 
c<;>urage. The head of the family, the old Duke of 
Chantcmellc, and his son Robert, spend their lives in 
their woods, hunting or brooding, and perfectly unsoci- 
able. The duchess and her daughter Claire visit the 
■poov and pray. The all-absorbing thought for all of 
them is that there was unequalled dignity in the great- 



Anomaly of the Stage 239 

ness of their name, and the cankering anxiety is the fear 
that the name is on the eve of disappearing for ever, 
for Robert is threatened with consumption. One 
day Robert tells his mf>thor that before his end comes 
ho would like to v.ac onr:o more the governess of his 
sister, a poor girl whf>m the duchess has turned out 
because she suspected her husband to be unduly atten- 
tive to her. The young man soon confesses he has had 
a child by the unfortunate governess. He will never 
marry the mother, but ho thinks of her baby with the 
anxiety of imminent death. When the duke hears all 
this his first impulse is furious anger, for he has really 
been in love with. Helenc Vatrin himself. But gradu- 
ally he calms himself ; a thought has dawned upon him : 
the lost hope of a descendant, here it is revived. Let 
Robert marry I Iclcine and the name of Chantemelle will 
not die out. "I thought of it," answers Robert, "but 
if Ilolene comes here she must be the equal of all." 
In turn, the old duke, the duchess, and the pure and 
proud Claire accept the sacrifice. But Helc^ne is no 
common woman, and her own x^ride has to be conquered 
too. When it is, and she is the wife of Robert, peace 
seems to inhabit at last the villa near the Mediterranean 
where the family have come to try and save Robert's 
life. But the nurse of Robert's child, an abominable 
woman, who knows the story of the old duke's relations 
with H616ne, tells Robert the awful truth. The latter 
receives the revelation calmly. He does not care for 
life now that his aim has been attained. He travels 
north with the certainty and the hope — soon, fulfilled — ■ 
of dying, and the i)1ay ends with the reading of his will, 
a page of quiet sublimity, 

M. de Curel has not always been so successful as in 
this play. Only once, in the Repas du Lion, has he hit 



240 The Return of the Light 

on a plot capable of this full development, but all his 
pieces are conceived in the same spirit and written with 
the same elevation. His place among French drama- 
tists is curious. If you ask any ordinary playgoer who 
are his favourites, he will seldom mention him, but if 
you ask him where he places the author of Les Fossiles, 
he will often unhesitatingly give him the first rank. 
The fact is that our minds are inevitably influenced by 
the immense number of dramas written to amuse, but 
it is also true that the streak to which M. de Curel's 
production corresponds is large enough to be regarded 
as a feature of the public mind tired at last of mere 
froth and elegant corruption. 

What is the impression left by a comparatively 
extensive study of the modern French stage and of 
the chief French dramatists followed not only in their 
plays, but in all the expressions of their philosophy? 
Can we find a formula that will enable us to bring 
order into the somewhat intricate statements we have 
made? Is there not, first of all, uppermost in our 
minds, and difficult to dispel, the sensation that 
modern dramatic production in France is, in spite 
of a few exceptions, a tremendous factor of public 
demoralization ? 

Certainly, forty-nine in fifty Parisian plays are more 
or less overtly immoral. The individualism, which has 
been turned loose at the great Revolution, and has 
almost uninterruptedly gained in the literary realm 
even more than elsewhere, is rampant on the stage. 
The fact is that duty is less dramatic — I only mean that 
it is less easy to dramatize — than passion, and unbridled 
creatures are more eloquent than sober men and women 
accustomed to self-denial and to habitual suppression 
of inordinate sentiments. The consequence is that 



Anomaly of the Stage 241 

anarchism is frequent and that no excuses are given 
for its appearance. Nay, dozens of so-called disciples 
of Ibsen still go on reasoning about the most vital issues 
and place in the mouths of the characters they invent 
radical utterances about the destruction of religion, 
society, and even family. But all this radicalism is 
only the cant of the stage, and, in spite of all their 
apparent boldness, the successors of Alexandre Dumas 
are, as I have said, more anxious than ever to retain 
their claims to the title of guides of the modern con- 
science. Summer after summer, when invited by 
respectable journalists to decide about the great issues 
of the day, they deliver themselves of distinctly con- 
servative opinions. They are guarded and timid, 
the moment they swerve from the beaten track, and, 
on the contrary, decisive and resolute when they find 
themselves on traditional ground. This is the contra- 
diction in playwrights. 

The same is found in the immense majority of 
playgoers. They seem to favour vice — ^for they will 
taboo no spectacle, and too often they give their 
wives the same liberty — but they openly blame, on 
leaving the theatre, what they have been so anx- 
ious not to miss. It is the paradoxical disposition 
which M. Lavedan intended to impugn in his Goilt 
du Vice. 

What are we to infer? That there are in the air two 
long-familiar tendencies, one of which is of the flesh 
while the other is of the spirit. Modem people have 
become used to over-exciting food, and though a con- 
stantly better enlightened instinct warns them more 
loudly against the danger of anarchical doctrines, they 
cannot wean themselves from the sights and language 
which subtle corruption and ever-increasing talent 
Id 



242 The Return of the Light 

have made fashionable. Both writers and pubHc are 
living a fallacy. 

The immediate conclusion we must draw is that the 
theatre does not mirror the city, and that the play is 
not painted after the audience. The theatre is 
something eminently artificial. Whatever playwrights 
might say or imply, they know that they work outside 
real life. The play is an after-dinner affair, never 
included in the concerns of the serious hours, attended 
by people who wear a special garb, bring in special dis- 
positions, expect a special light, and would be — in 
fact are every now and then — considerably startled 
when they meet something more like the morning light 
and morning thoughts, as in the plays of M. de Curel. 
It is agreed on all sides that the theatre, just like the 
music-hall, is a concession made by seriousness to folly. 
The most successful plays are none of those I have 
named for their literary or philosophical excellence; 
they are mere pieces of extravagant drollery, like 
Papa or the Manage de Mademoiselle Beulemans, with 
which neither morals, nor philosophy, nor art in the 
higher sense of the word, have anything to do. A great 
deal of the language of an epoch is manufactured on the 
stage by clever artisans in phrases — not essentially 
different in this from the higher class of tailors — but 
its ideas come from deeper sources — economics and 
politics to be named first — which the novel, literary 
criticism, and the multiform newspaper article handle 
and begin to formulate long before the theatre takes 
note of their histrionic value and gives them its appar- 
ently vivid but in fact flimsy reality. The destructive 
plays we have reviewed in this chapter are manifesta- 
tions of a belated stage of French opinion and of artificial 
appearances. The state of mind at present in the mak- 



Anomaly of the Stage 243 

ing would be found in the evolution of a typical French- 
man like M. Jules Lemaitre, or in that of M, Banes, and 
in the literature of their disciples. It means a strik- 
ing advance in the direction of seriousness, a mistrust 
of wit for wit's sake, as well as of the empty formulae 
that the past generation delighted in, an anxiety about 
the morrow made of selfishness, to be sure, but includ- 
ing a recognition of solidarity and an accompanying 
responsibility; above all, it means a sense of the real 
which we seemed to have lost and which the rising 
generation possesses to a refreshing exaggeration; for 
a time comes when narrow-mindedness and stubborn- 
ness appear refreshing compared to cheap scepticism. 
Of this change the stage shows no traces yet, though 
literature has noticed it for several years. If the reader 
should wish to realize the gulf between the theatre and 
life he would only have to read a little book, Mon 
Filleul, published by M. Lavedan just as he produced 
Le Godt du Vice. The contrast is extraordinary. 
There is more wit in the play than in the book, but this 
is not the question. M. Lavedan is a very good French- 
man and, I might say, a very good man — though some- 
what ashamed of it — and in both the book and the 
play there is a moral inspiration, a desire of improving 
the times. But, as I said above, Le Gout du Vice was 
a signal failure, stage necessities making it imperative 
for M. Lavedan to be light and affect immorality when 
intending to preach seriousness and morals, while 
Mon Filleul is highly persuasive. Yet in Le Gout du 
Vice, as well as in Mon Filleul, the author wanted to 
present, and, in fact, did present, modem types. But 
the characters in the play are evening Parisians who 
could only be artificial, superficial, and bubbling, while 
those in the book are a very tolerably real godfather 



244 The Return of the Light 

and godson talking about the subjects of the day in 
the language of the day. 

8. The Rising Generation 

It is generally admitted that the change in the 
national spirit brought about by the Tangier awakening 
is more visible in the rising generation — the men be- 
tween eighteen and twenty-five — than in its predecessor 
and some people maintain that this change is so marked 
that it amounts to a modification in the traditional 
temperament of the French. We shall investigate the 
change and discuss the so-called modification. 

First of all, is there really a contrast between the 
generation which came to manhood towards 1870 and 
its offspring? Yes, undoubtedly ; but so much has been 
written on this contrast that a great deal that is born 
of words has already taken the place of plain truth, and 
one feels on one's guard. 

To begin with the doomed period, the much despised 
last decade of the nineteenth century, it is too often 
judged from the celebrated preface to Le Disciple, in 
which Bourget, in 1889, divided contemporary youth 
into two sections; one consisting of the brutally cynical, 
and the other of refined if enervated nihilists. This 
preface is an estimable piece of rhetoric, but it is rhetori- 
cal from beginning to end, and, as is invariably the 
case with unduly successful rhetoric, it has begotten an 
immense progeny of mere words. It is true that there 
were brutal cynics and dainty Revolutionists among the 
young men of those days, but were they a majority? Is 
it not better to say that they represented that portion 
of young Frenchmen who, being either professional 
writers or abstractions from contemporary novels 



The Rising Generation 245 

— those of Daudet, for instance — were, above all, 
literary matter? 

It has been the pleasant lot of the present writer 
to see a great deal of French youth from the year 1890. 
These young men were mostly fervid and enthusiastic, 
as fortunately young men will be. We did see some 
specimens of effete aristocracy or wealth, we occasion- 
ally heard brutal assertions concerning the use of life, 
and I knew two perfect samples of the pretty affectation 
which was then called Buddhism and turned a boy of 
twenty- two into a sort of indulgent old man; but these 
were exceptions. The fact is that there was no object 
for popular passion, no definite ideal of any kind. 
Politics ran high, but they were hardly ever taken 
seriously, and a young man might spend the time 
between his leaving school at eighteen and his marry- 
ing at twenty -five without encountering any subject 
that really appealed to him. Some few individuals 
owed to their surroundings an interest in the campaigns 
of Drumont against the Jewish power, or of Barres 
against ParHamentary corruption, or — this was my case 
— ^in the evolution of the Church towards acceptance of 
modern conditions, and the ralliement advocated by 
Leo the Thirteenth; but they were very few, and the 
truth is that universal stagnation prevailed. 

Consequently, we may say that personal experience, 
even in the case of a man connected all his life with 
intellectual milieus and intelligent young men, provides 
us with very few positive data, and on the contrary 
with a great deal that is purely negative. So it was 
mostly through books and magazines, through the 
innumerable manifestoes which esthetic or ethical 
"schools " issued so freely, through inferences, in a word, 
from literary evidence, that we gathered anything 



246 The Return of the Light 

about the restricted Parisian circles which are fre- 
quently offered us to-day as having given its tone to 
that period. 

Tolstoism was purely literary, and so was Buddhism, 
and no less so the Nietzscheism which appeared in the 
early works of Barr^s, and the Socialism which we 
discover rather retrospectively in the books of Peguy. 
The cynicism of which Bourget complains did exist, no 
doubt, but in many cases it was created more than 
represented by the theatre, and thus was literary too. 
Young men were restless in default of something really 
mastering to give themselves to, and they tried all that 
came within reach without much conviction. We have 
heard many times that for several years, Jaures had 
great influence over the students at the Ecole Normale, 
and we find in fact that two or three of them found their 
way behind him into the Chamber and a few others 
into the Press. But read the recollections of Peguy to 
which I referred above, you will feel immediately that 
the so-called Socialist wave was limited to the delight of 
a few lads in being distinguished by a famous orator, 
and magnified by the same delight in an unconscion- 
able manner. As much might be said of the influence 
of Paul Desjardins, or of Barres in his first years, or of 
many a man who seemed to be a man at the time — ^for 
instance, Ernest Lajeunesse — and is at present hardly 
a name. 

The average young men of the declining nineteenth 
century, therefore, were mostly what their fathers' 
conversation and the tone of the age made them. 
Scientism ruling, they were far from all belief, but not 
averse to a vague mysticism; Renan having been the 
great admiration of the generation before them, they 
affected a distinguished dilettantism, or a distinguished 



The Rising Generation 247 

scepticism, or a distinguished nihilism — even Jules 
Lemaitre knew these affectations; peace seeming set- 
tled, they had a great contempt for war, and were 
above barbarism and Revanche; they were incredibly 
jealous of their liberty, but this was chiefly talk, as they 
consented readily enough to become officials, with no 
other liberty than that of shirking their work. In short, 
they were the products of a time in which nothing 
decisive was taking place, either in man's thought or in 
his life ; they had vague ideals, vague ideas, and a vague 
though frequently expressed disgust of it all, which 
sounded more like cynicism than surfeit, but was in 
reality surfeit. 

Against this description we should now place the 
portrait of the contemporary young man. It ought to 
be easily drawn as the model is before our eyes, but we 
are confronted with the same difficulty which stood in 
our way with respect to the foregoing generation; too 
much has been written already, too much is affirmed 
because it sounds logical, and we have to sift and criti- 
cize once more. In the coiu^se of the years 19 12 and 
1913, the newspapers and magazines were full of this 
Dauphin, the modern young man. Elderly gentlemen 
interviewed him day after day with that respectful 
eagerness which gives a somewhat silly appearance even 
to some letters written by Taine when the Dauphin was 
called Bourget; and the answers poured, decisive and 
confident, rather systematic too, with a dash of philoso- 
phy thrown over the facts. Many an interested reader 
must have concluded, as did M. Faguet in the Revue des 
Deux Mondes: ** Yes, they are very well, but, by Jove, 
they are not modest." The fact is, they generally talk 
as if they were the masterpiece of their own hands. 

Of course, they are only the sons of their fathers, born 



248 The Return of the Light 

under happier — ^morally — circumstances, and enjoying 
the privilege which belongs to all happily born sons, 
of having no doubts about themselves. 

They certainly are sensible. You never hear them 
launch into fine speeches about the vague ideals which 
triumphed with the Dreyfusists. They are guarded 
and reserved in the presence of theories, they insist on 
being given chapter and verse about everything, and 
you see them boldly do a thing which was considered 
uneducated and almost ill-bred in 1S95 — viz., foresee 
consequences. They also have sober ideas about the 
rights of man, those rights of man the mention of which 
was formerly enough to throw down every barrier to 
individual freedom. They stand for duties and dis- 
cipline. They take no nonsense from Socialism, and 
the tendency is so universal that you find it among the 
younger Syndicalists themselves. They respect the 
police, and despise indulgent jurymen; in short, they 
are a great deal more reasonable than their own fathers, 
and Ludovic Halevy — the author of La Famille Cardi- 
nal, it is true — when he said that he stood rather in awe 
of his sons, was only a little way in advance of the times. 

But if you analyse the environment and circum- 
stances in which this phenomenon took place, you will 
find that the fathers and tutors of these young men are 
largely responsible for it. 

No lad of eighteen ever took up the cudgels for wis- 
dom, order, restraint, and generally the soberer virtues, 
unless he was made to love them, and it takes consider- 
able eloquence to make him love them. But there sel- 
dom were more eloquent people than the fathers of 
these young fellows, because they were not only sincere 
but pathetic, and to a certain extent comical in their 
disappointments. If they had not so heartily believed 



The Rising Generation 249 

in Liberty they would not have been so heartily tired of 
seeing Liberty never result in liberties. If they had 
not listened with complaisance to the florid speeches of 
Jaures and his compeers they would have been less 
irresistible when they at last broke out into the "words, 
words, words" of perfect disgust. Perhaps if they had 
not been deluged with so much filthy literature they 
would not have had such a surfeit of it. As it was, they 
spoke with an admixture of surprise and discontent 
which a boy will invariably construe as akin to navuete 
and esteem in consequence. Certainly there is a shade 
of contempt in the appreciation of the last years of the 
nineteenth century by the men who are now twenty-five, 
because they could not but feel certitudes where they 
saw their fathers only arrive at inferences. 

In the same way it took either genius or the best kind 
of Catholic education to resist the influence of Taine, or, 
above all, Renan, in the 'nineties, because determinism 
and scepticism were positively in the air. The vogue 
of a doctrine acts as a physical law. To-day our young 
men find that scientism is effete, determinism coarse, 
and scepticism provincial. They find that the fash- 
ionable philosophy taught by a non-Christian — there is 
something amiss in calling M. Bergson a Jew — adopted 
on all hands, and just enough contradicted by theolo- 
gians not to appear immediately religious, is a vindica- 
tion of spiritualism and free will, and indirectly a 
demonstration of a divine power; it is inevitable that 
they should be without effort all that was most difficult 
thirty years ago. 

Again, it is true that French education is still exag- 
geratedly literary; and that, judging by the plans and 
methods recommended, often too by actual practice, it 
would seem as if every French boy were destined for 



250 The Return of the Light 

the career of a writer, often of a playwright, or at least 
of a dramatic critic. But professors have changed 
all the same. They are no longer those whom Bourget 
knew in the Paris lycees, who never said a word to their 
boys outside the class, and during class never said a 
word that did not concern literature, and more or less 
overtly the literature of the day. The fallacy which 
placed true greatness exclusively in the power of feeling 
or imagining and expression is rapidly making way for 
something more broadly human and manful. The 
professors of to-day have not yet become what different 
conditions caused the professors of the seventeenth 
century to be: men who used the classics as a means 
and not an end, in the absolute certainty that neither 
themselves nor, above all, their pupils, had one chance 
in ten thousand of ever printing a line. They still write 
a great deal, and the enormous amount of printed 
matter accumulating outside the school walls weighs 
upon their imagination and reacts on their speech, but 
they have served their time in the army and remember 
it with pleasure, and few are those who do not honestly 
realize that being comes before writing. The notion of 
a man as an intelligent will rather than a longing 
fantasy once more becomes familiar and banishes the 
opposite monstrosity. 

All this being the atmosphere we breathe and take 
in quite naturally cannot but have results, and the 
"contemporary young man," if he is not all that he 
thinks and says of himself, is at least no fiction. 

As I said above, he is somewhat positive and trench- 
ant about principles, and is seldom decoyed into a dis- 
cussion of the bases of individual or even social ethics. 
It seems as if in this respect the experience of his father 
had actually passed into his blood, as if he remembered 



The Rising Generation 251 

the endless debates of twenty-five years ago, and had 
made up his mind that he has had quite enough. The 
purely academic attitude is a very rare exception, which 
however, I met with some time ago. It was at the house 
of an engineer whose name was mentioned at the time of 
the Dreyfus Affair. A young professor of philosophy 
was there, a good-looking, smartly dressed man of 
twenty-eight, with an eager and yet cold expression, 
which I could not at first make out. It was only as 
the conversation became more animated that I saw 
where the eagerness tended. This young philosopher 
was full of doubts, which is certainly not amiss in a 
philosopher, but he was dying to play them off, and 
gradually did so with an imperfectly disguised satis- 
faction which was very unpleasant in itself; in religion 
and morals, as well as politics, there was nothing he 
would not question. The sons of our host — three 
young men between eighteen and twenty -four — sturdy, 
whole-souled fellows, instantly fired up, not once 
deigning to discuss his arguments, which would not 
have been very difficult, but constantly reverting to the 
fact that these hair-splittings were all very well in a 
room where nothing was going on except cigarette- 
smoking, but were worse than useless in the street. 
The difference in the point of view was vital, and the 
young philosopher looked curiously anachronistic. 
It is not surprising that the verbiage of mere politi- 
cians should be treated with contempt by the rising 
generation. The politician is regarded as not only 
intellectually but morally inferior, a man who drives a 
profitable though disreputable trade, and covers his 
dealings with patriotic pretences. Even a Gambetta 
would be impossible to-day unless he preached exactly 
the reverse of Gambetta's doctrine — that is to say, did 



252 The Return of the Light 

not see remedies in the success of a party. Young 
men no longer go to political meetings with no other 
immediate object than the return of a deputy ; the very 
idea is enough to move either their laughter or their 
anger. The consequence is that political divisions 
among them are immaterial compared with what they 
were in 1880. If Deroiilede had died then, his funeral, 
instead of being attended by a hundred thousand men 
so united in the great patriotic idea that not one jarring 
cry was heard, would have been a riotous scene. If 
General Picquart had died before 1906, we should not 
have seen what took place at St. Cyr on the occasion 
of his funeral : permission granted to the nine hundred 
cadets to attend the ceremony independently if they 
pleased, and not one taking advantage of it, because 
doing so would have looked like a decidedly political 
demonstration. 

The purely patriotic feeling has almost universally 
replaced political tendencies, and it is at present at 
least jealous and sensitive. The Sorbonne professors, 
having under the influence of M. Monod, and espe- 
cially in the exaltation which accompanied the Dreyfus 
Affair, been unduly indulgent to Internationalism and 
insistently partial for German methods, are far from 
popular with their audiences. Men like MM. Aulard, 
Seignobos, V. Basch, and Andler, who a few years ago 
found no contradiction, are frequently spoken of now as 
shamefaced Frenchmen, taken to task for their short- 
sighted erudition, and, which is worse, made to look as 
the representatives of a dead and not very honourable 
past. Students are still fond of going abroad, and, in 
fact, almost a majority of them manage to spend a year 
or two at some foreign university. But what a contrast 
between the impressions they publish and those of their 



The Rising Generation 253 

seniors ! The latter either wrote in the cold impersonal 
spirit of Taine or in that of Loti, at best in that of Bour- 
get's Sensations d'Oxford. All that rose in these pro- 
ductions above mere poetic dilettantism was a regret of 
some opportunity missed in France and envied where 
the writer found it. The point of view was invariably 
individualistic, and is apt to-day to look selfish or child- 
ish. The travelling impressions of students nowadays 
are still picturesque, but they would be ashamed of 
being nothing else, and in most cases they might be 
written not by men with a literary training and object 
but by diplomatic or consular agents constantly bear- 
ing in mind the patriotic point of view or the European 
relation of France. Stendhal is much nearer these 
wide-awake inquirers than Gobineau, and the German 
tendencies of the latter are probably responsible for 
the neglect in which he is already left. 

It is not surprising, and I ought hardly to mention, 
that the Tangier shock should have been felt more by 
young men than by anybody else. I have said else- 
where how it affected even the working classes, and it is 
remarkable that the impulse which was then given has 
not lost any of its energy. Interview, if you have a 
chance, a private soldier : you will find not only that he 
accepts the prospect of serving three years without 
repining, but takes a keen interest in the progress of the 
twenty-year-old recruits who joined his regiment at 
the end of 19 13; he evidently has thought much of war 
as a practical possibility and is preoccupied with it. 

Matter-of-fact and business-loving as the richer 
classes have become, they gladly take on the military 
charges. You never hear the impatient jests of former 
days about the absurdity and uselessness of much that 
is done in the barracks. The great object ennobles all 



254 The Return of the Light 

the mean details. There was something almost pitiful 
in a letter of Bernstein, the dramatist, admitting two 
or three years ago that he had not seen at twenty the 
greatness of military servitude as he saw it now. A 
young man like Lieutenant Ernest Psichari, the grand- 
son of Renan, giving up his career and exchanging his 
prospects for the life of a private in an African regi- 
ment, would have seemed a brainless madcap at the 
end of the nineteenth century; to-day he is a typical 
Frenchman, 

Even schoolboys have felt the universal influence 
and show it in their simple way. It seems yesterday 
that the present writer knew a boy of seventeen, the 
son of French parents, but brought up in America, 
who used to shake his head in polite disapproval when- 
ever war was mentioned, and only excited amusement 
among the other boys. To-day he would be hooted or, 
more probably, speedily converted. When the possi- 
bility of a war is mentioned, all professors notice those 
signs of interest about which an experienced man is 
never mistaken. 

All this is clear enough and certain enough. Owing 
to the experiences and disappointments of past years, 
the Frenchman of to-morrow will be what the French 
have been throughout their history, excepting a short 
period evidently partaking of the nature of a disease, 
neither afraid of nor philosophically antagonistic to war, 
and probably inclined to it. A great deal that is said 
about this subject by men who are 7iot young sounds 
rather boastful and bombastic, but it is only because 
they are not young. The same things said by their 
sons seem natural. These carry about with them a 
changed atmosphere. 

It is difficult to be as affirmative on a few other points 



The Rising Generation 255 

which have been frequently discussed recently. MM. 
Tarde and Massis in their book, Les Jeunes Gens 
d'Atijourd'hui, say that the rising generation is purer 
and more moral than its predecessors. It certainly 
stands a better chance, for literature is infinitely less 
salacious than it used to be, philosophy is no longer a 
dissolvent, and the tone of conversation is improved; 
the insistence upon gauloiserie, which was the rule since 
the empty brilliant days of the Second Empire, is now 
bad form, and that perfectly Parisian type the fanfaron 
de vice looks provincial even in the country. But we 
have to be content with those appearances, which after 
all have generally been supposed to mirror with com- 
parative accuracy the real state of affairs, and possibly 
with the fact that young men have a tendency to marry 
earlier than was customary, as appears from University 
and Army statistics. 

The same ought to be said of the religious inclination 
of young men. There is no positive evidence that they 
are better Catholics than their seniors, but they are 
hardly ever anti-clerical, and their philosophy leads to, 
rather than from, a religious life. Here again we are 
conscious of an atmosphere which is not of yesterday, 
and the superiority of our young men lies in their finding 
it ready instead of having to create it. Perhaps if the 
foregoing generation had not had the unpleasant experi- 
ence of blighting unbelief, or had not painfully groped 
its way out of the vague religiousness associated with 
the name of Tolstoi, the field would appear less open 
for Catholic influences than it is at present. But per- 
haps again the conditions we see, being the fruits of 
disgust rather than of faith, may amount only to a sort 
of neutral goodwill with a great deal of the notion — 
widely spread after the Revolution and after 1898 — 



256 The Return of the Light 

that religion is indispensable for a nation, but individu- 
als need only be generally favourable to it. This view- 
usually results in the establishment of apparently strong 
ecclesiastical institutions apt to deceive the clergy about 
dangerous undercurrents, and only effective if they help 
and do not replace proselytizing. 

The last characteristic of the contemporary young 
man is his taste for action. Here so much perplexing 
nonsense is heard and repeated that we must proceed 
carefully and light up our path with useful distinctions. 
All the young men whom MM. Tarde and Massis have 
interviewed declare that they are tired of theories and 
talk, and that if they have to go to school in order to 
live, it shall be the school of life itself. This sounds 
very much like theories and talk in disguise, and we 
are not surprised to see this exalted resolve occasionally 
supported by the authority of William James, or — more 
timidly — by Whitman: there is a great deal of mere 
literature or philosophizing in it. Let us give credit for 
these speeches only to the inborn want of the French 
to have intellectual systems to rest upon. Now we 
must ask ourselves what the people who really do some- 
thing are doing. Is it more, or of a better quality, or 
accomplished in a higher spirit? M. Gustave Le Bon, 
who is a well-known, and deservedly well-known, social 
philosopher, does not think so; modern young men, he 
says, are all ''arrivistes.^' This is sweeping indeed and 
seems insufficiently demonstrated. Probably M. Le 
Bon, who is an idealist, is unpleasantly affected by the 
fact that the possession of wealth or influence is the 
apparent object of practically every activity. But this 
may only be an appearance, or a bequest of the preced- 
ing generation, which does not essentially belong to 
ours. The real question is whether our young men are 



The Rising Generation 257 

not impelled toward action by a more or less conscious 
craving after self-development, and it seems that the 
answer ought to be in the affirmative. 

The American taste for "doing something," what- 
ever it may be, which M, Demolins proposed more than 
twenty years ago for our admiration and imitation, 
certainly is at the root of French activity. Young men 
still marry heiresses — and commercial and industrial 
expansion rapidly multiplies the number of heiresses — 
but they would be ashamed to live on their wives' 
money ; they are often seen to go into partnership with 
their fathers-in-law instead of leaving them to their 
low avocations. When such chances do not offer, 
they seldom resign themselves to the passivity which 
used to be the rule ; in default of something better they 
travel, trying to give to their pastimes the appearance 
of utility. The recently developed literary hobby 
among the aristocracy, ridiculous in one aspect, pro- 
ceeds however from the dread of being useless. 

The evident progress among women also works in 
the same direction. Society women who spend their 
mornings in hospitals qualifying for the Red Cross, girls 
who take up the classics, or medicine, or the law, as 
hundreds and thousands do at the present moment, 
often without any mercenary views, could hardly co- 
exist with the shameless specimens of laziness that 
Lavedan, Donnay, and Gyp before them looked upon as 
representative in the 'nineties. Energy is in fashion, 
and veulerie, as it is called in the most unpleasant 
syllables in the language, is superannuated. 

Another proof of this change is the comparative 
desertion of Government careers. The official is 
frequently despised on account of his lack of independ- 
ence, his indifference to his work, the tmeventfulness 
17 



258 The Return of the Light 

of his life, and the habit he has of thinking himself the 
master instead of the servant of the public. This 
contempt begins to tell. The competition for situa- 
tions in the great industrial enterprises at one end of the 
scale and for the big shops at the other is speedily re- 
placing the old struggle after "quiet positions." The 
number of candidates even for professorships is not 
half of what it was twenty years ago, and at the last 
examination for agregation in natural philosophy the 
jury found just enough competition for a bare applica- 
tion of their rules. All this shows an evident return to 
the spirit of enterprise which characterized the French 
quite as much as the English when France and England 
were the only nations with colonial empires. 

Another sure sign of the same reaction is the popu- 
larity of sports, and, above all, the consciousness of 
the qualities developed by sports. Sports used to be 
regarded in France from two different standpoints. 
There were the people who enjoyed open-air exercise, 
and those who did not care at all. The former would go 
in for riding, fencing, fives or rackets, but they were 
quite as ignorant as the latter of that reasoned pleasure 
in them which is characteristic of the modern practice 
of sports. A man might fence or play tennis every day 
of his life, and not take the least interest in a boxing 
match, which to him would be only a circus perform- 
ance. Sport was first of all exercise, then an art, and 
then to a certain extent rivalry, but the latter was in as 
small a proportion as can be conceived. To-day the 
numberless boys whom you see in the streets kicking 
a small ball according to mysterious rules, or in the sub- 
urbs of towns playing Rugby as scientifically as they can, 
certainly enjoy the physical sensation of the game, and 
the excitement of it, but they seem above all to delight 



The Rising Generation 259 

in doing it because a certain difficulty is attached to 
doing it to perfection. Their pleasure is quite similar 
to that which their fathers used to take in being drilled 
at the imminent risk of being punished. Sportiveness 
is a conviction rather than a taste, and in numberless 
instances it does duty for religion. There is an effort 
under it all. The pleasure of obeying in spite of being 
French is novel and piquant, and is sustained by a cer- 
tain amount of exaltation, and by the delight of having 
a vote and a voice in a club. The absolute spontaneity 
of the Englishman in the enjoyment of games is here 
replaced by the consciousness of pleasant self -conquer- 
ing, and I will show by and by that this feature is pro- 
bably the most important. At all events, the tendency 
of sporting young men is a highly self-realized one, 
involving attention to physical and moral development 
much more than the impassioned condition one is con- 
scious of in an English or American boxing-ring. 

Some people affect to speak of aviation as a kind of 
sport, and lay great stress on French superiority in it, 
but the least effort at analysing the airman's state of 
mind shows that it has nothing in common with that 
of the sportsman ; it is entirely and exclusively an aspect 
of the old military spirit of the French, and as such is 
far more significant than any amount of sporting in- 
terest. Certainly there is a world between the sages 
of 1898 and the fascinating specimens of French pluck 
we see at Buc and Villacoublay. 

To conclude, the new generation appears stronger in 
its instincts, more resolute, and almost stubborn, in 
its ideas than its predecessor, altogether nearer nature 
and less artificial, in spite of the wisdom it has inherited 
rather than acquired. In one respect it seems to show 
an imheard-of development of the national character, 



26o The Return of the Light 

and we must now ask ourselves whether the traditional 
temperament of the French is really undergoing a 
change about which we ought to make up our minds, 
whether it be to accept or counteract it. 

9. Is the New Generation Less French? 

This so-called change has been pointed out several 
times and deplored by friendly foreigners, the best 
known of whom is Mr. J. E. C. Bodley.' To anybody 
who knew and loved Prance some fifteen years 
ago, these writers say, and revisits it at present, the 
contrast is striking and painful. The idealism for 
which the French have been famous throughout their 
history has vanished, so have their broad-mindedness 
and their warm-heartedness, and even the gaiety with- 
out which they were almost unthinkable. Paris is 
absurdly overestimated: any foreigner who lives there 
for any length of time will find it a depressing place with 
a dull atmosphere. The French are almost universally 
what they used to be once in rare exceptions — viz. 
Chauvinists, on their guard against their neighbours, 
thinking a great deal more of war and revenge than of 
culture, thinking of money too. They used to be 
charming conversationalists, but in this also they have 
lost ; they have replaced the drawing-room with the field, 
and make unsuccessful efforts to become sportsmen. 
Seriousness and application are not becoming to them: 
the strain easily turns to sadness; in fact, they are 
melancholy. 

The great grievance seems to be that the French are 
less good "Europeans" than they were. Paris was a 

^Vide "Decay of Idealism in France," in Cardinal Manning and 
Other Essays. Longmans, 191 2. 



The New Generation 261 

sort of national park for Europe, not so long ago. 
Everybody could come there, and not only find a wel- 
come, but even a something yielding which was the sub- 
tlest of flatteries ; an aptitude to lend oneself to a foreign 
point of view, to see and point out charm in a visitor, 
when the visitor himself was not quite conscious of it; 
a contempt for prejudices, which was unspeakably 
refreshing after the narrow-mindedness one had left at 
home; a dash, often a recklessness, which bespoke that 
wonderful apprehension of things sub specie ceternitaHs 
which was the fascination of Renan and helped you to 
realize that there was a philosophy under cosmopolitan- 
ism. Now the French are only French, and seem to be 
that somewhat defiantly : a great falling off ! 

This impression shows clearly that — owing no doubt 
to the development of France as a purely intellectual 
nation which began with the Encyclopaedists, was at 
its fullest in the heyday of Renan 's celebrity, but became 
only thoroughly conscious of itself in Anatole France's 
compositions — the French had grown to be in the eyes 
of leisured Europeans supremely dainty, costly, ingen- 
ious toys, but toys all the same, with which it had long 
ceased to be dangerous to play. France was a wonder- 
ful field for experiments of all sorts; literary, moral, 
religious, political, or social, which the natives carried 
on for the enjoyment of Europe with captivating dar- 
ing. To what extent the admiration was mixed up with 
something less sympathetic it is not easy to say, but 
when its expression was unqualified it was apt to sound 
unintelligent as much as friendly. 

Place beside it the terribly wide-awake clear-sighted- 
ness of a barbarian of genius like Bismarck, or the out- 
spokenness of a writer with manly instincts like Kipling, 
the truth flashes upon you at once. The so-called 



262 The Return of the Light 

friends of France were as blind as she was herself to the 
earthly, not metaphysical, consequences of her attitude. 
They were evil companions, dangerous flatterers, and 
as in their hearts they could not abstract themselves 
from worldly considerations, every time France was 
struck and they could not refrain from thanking Pro- 
vidence for not being born toys, they appeared hypo- 
critical. Uncritical love is apt to find itself in that 
position. 

If it is folly to imagine that a nation can keep its feet 
steady on the earth with its head in the clouds, it is 
ignorance to suppose that France, in the typical periods 
of her history, was frivolous and delightful, or ideal- 
istic and reckless, as the so-called "good Europeans" 
like her to be. We have every reason to believe that 
the recent and deplorable development was a literary 
disease and nothing else. Nations, like individuals, 
show various reactions, occasionally have moods which 
do not touch their original character. The classical 
description of the Gallic disposition, with its two 
propensities r rem militarem et argute loqui, never ceased 
to apply to the French temperament; but there are 
times for everything. A hundred and twent}'" years 
ago there were probably already in Paris refined circles 
in which argute loquentes slurred their r's and strutted 
to insufficiently dressed women, but it was lucky that 
toward the same time armies of ragged men with several 
very uncivilized notions were guarding the frontier and 
carrying on rem militarem irrespective of rhetoric or 
philosophy. 

Hardly two ages in the succession of French history 
present the same physiognomy. There is a world 
between mediaeval simplicity and the violence of the 
sixteenth century. The age of Louis the Fourteenth 



The New Generation 263 

is as different from its successor as a retired diplo- 
mat is different from a sprightly young seigneur com- 
ing back from England full of M. de Bolingbroke, of 
theories and persiflage. Sometimes the strong side, 
sometimes the brilliant side of the national character 
appears. What we see in history we could have seen in 
the chess-board of the various classes. Literary people 
of inferior quality, politicians, worldlings who live only 
by shining, all the individuals who, after the fashion of 
the mask-like fairies in Scandinavian mythology, sub- 
sist only so long as nobody sees their hollow side, are 
very different from the millions which form the back- 
bone of the nation. While they talk the French are 
apt to indulge in all sorts of nonsense, but it is no less 
true that they distrust mere talk the moment they act. 
When the great carnival of theories which went on 
during and immediately after the Dreyfus Affair was 
the success of the day, one might have supposed that 
everybody was in it. Yet if you had inquired among 
the classes which are the true representatives of French 
activity, the useful — not the butterfly — aristocrat, the 
bourgeois merchant, the peasant, and the soldier would 
all have given you sound common-sense even on the 
burning question of the day. Add that Paris may be 
saying what it pleases to amuse itself and its guests, but 
all the time it does so, slow-going Flanders and wary 
Champagne, crafty Normandy and stubborn Brittany, 
wise Touraine and shrewd Lorriane, astute Provence and 
solid Dauphine, all the cautious old provinces in their 
castellated fortresses of plain good sense are silent and 
expectant. The time always comes when these reserves 
are turned to account. 

Frothy Paris — or, I should say, the froth of Paris, 
for the rue Saint-Denis is decidedly sensible — ^with its 



264 The Return <)( ihv Lii^hi 

bal )I)ling deputies and tattlinjj[ji)unialis(,s, its loud thea- 
tres and over-subtK> KtIu re-rooms, lias been silenced for 
a tiino, and whoever realizes that Franecis a greater and 
bettiu- thing than the cosmopolitan quarticr dc L'Opira 
ought to rejoice at seeing stronger, if ruder, elements 
come uppermost just when they are needed. Surely 
young Frenchmen arc not less French for hating hu- 
manitarian nonsense ami j)referring their own country. 

It would be absurd to deny IJu; existence of a few 
ridiculous features in the new generation, which cannot 
but strike the visitor somewhat uni)leasant]y. li^xag- 
geration is the fault of all collective impulses. 

To begin with, the fashion tends towards gravity, and 
gravity docs not sit well on the average Frenchman. 
The interest in foreign polities has created a. new breed 
of journalists who enjoy llu^ advantages of being the 
first of their kind in this coimtry, and magnify their 
importance accordingly. I have described in another 
chapter their social attitude : it consists in silence, silence 
in ail its eloquent meanings, from heroic self -suppression 
l() unquestionable triumph. A council of such unites 
in the dining- or smoking-room is irresistible: the Ama- 
tlan Academy did not come near it. It is needless to say 
that this is copied by fashionable young men who pre- 
tend to luni^h with Sir Edward (Irey ami dine with M. 
Venezclos, aiul unafTectedly let us ailniire their thorough 
mastery over some such question as the Naxos fisheries. 
The sportsman, too, is a very reticent. ]^erson. He is 
afraid of passing for a braggart, and altliough he merely 
plays football at Arcueil or even golf at Neuilly, he is as 
modest as if he were Rl<5riot or V6drines themselves. 
He, in his turn, is not only imitated but improved 
upon by that very un-French creation, the boy scout. 
The boy scout is too young, otherwise he nnouIiI be 



The New Generation 265 

clean-shaven ; he dresses in khaki, which will never look 
well in the Meuclon woods; he is unduly tall for his age 
and country, wears enormous boots which he never 
thinks ugly enough, shows any amount of spindle legs, 
and apes to jjcrfcction the globe-trotting gait of the 
American artists in the Boulevard Raspail. His chief, 
a young man of twenty-four, in a sombrero and sober 
grey, is a cross between a Methodist minister and a 
New England schoolmaster; I have never seen one 
whom I could suppose to have been in a line regiment 
the year before; I have never met a party of scouts in 
the train on a vSunday afternoon without a vague fear 
lest they should demurely rise and solemnly strike up a 
hymn. With what a regret they make one look back 
to the lazy dawdling columns of the lyceens of old, who 
had never walked more than four miles when they left 
school, and thought nothing of twenty the week after 
they joined a regiment! But it ta]ces no great divining 
power to prophesy the disappearance of all khaki boys 
witJiin two years and their absorption into the sociSiSs 
militaires. 

vSome foreign observers will have it that it is not only 
seriousness but sadness and anxiety that are visible in 
modern Frenchmen. Are they right? Certainly the 
workman of yore seemed to do his work more cheerfully 
than he does it to-day, and the tradesmen who retired 
from their little shop to a house in the banlieue thirty 
years ago seemed to talk more light-heartedly than we 
hear them now. Syndicalism, machinery, and banks 
at every corner are no elements of cheerfulness. You 
feel no inclination to merriment when you contemplate 
a strike of which your wife strongly disapproves ; you do 
not attempt to sing, even if you are a mason, a carpen- 
ter, or a painter, when your every movement is regu- 



266 The Return of the Light 

lated by a noisily puffing steam-crane; and you will look 
grave behind your counter, even if pennies pour into 
your till, when rubbers go down just after you bought 
them. Modern civilization, if civilization we must call 
it, is as deadly to simple joy as mere ecus were to La 
Fontaine's cobbler. With the multiplication of money 
one can notice the disappearance of taste. It is obvious 
in the passion of the Sunday sportsman for gaudy col- 
ours ; the sight of two teams of motley Neapolitan-look- 
ing footballers in the fortifications makes you feel an 
alien among these young men. And the house of the 
thriving clerk goes the way of his clothes. The environs 
of Paris, which were, and still are in many places, so 
harmonious, are a nightmare in some others. The 
house which the Parisian petit bourgeois fancies stands in 
a lotissement — that is to say, the site of an historical park 
brought over by a Jewish syndicate and geometrically 
cut up — it is narrow so as to save space and high- 
shouldered so as to gain some; it is made of brick or of 
the hideous yellow meulihre because it must be cheap, 
and is exposed in its ugly nudity because creepers are 
said to be damp, and the creamy or softly pink casts of 
old are only good for villagers' houses ; it has a garden, 
but no tree, shrub, or hedge is suffered in it because 
doctors recommend light and the thriving clerk is a bom 
gardener; there it is, looking like a sentry-box in its 
desolate prison yard. Look out when you come from 
Calais for a place called Aulnay, a few miles before you 
reach Saint-Denis: you will see what the thriving clerk 
has made, of all places, of the forest of Bondy ; or visit 
Meudon and see what horrors the few magnificent 
cedars that are left of the Dauphin's park are made 
to shelter; or visit Ecouen, with its princely chateau, 
and see — no, do not see anything else. Alas, 



The New Generation 267 

alas, how much there would be to say about Paris 
itself! How much has gone down, and how much 
has gone up, the thought of which is almost un- 
bearable! The municipal councillor is of the same 
essence as the grocers who elect and, which is worse, 
pay him, and the architect is as servilely cringing to 
the Jew as the suburban builder is to his colonies 
of clerks. 

What sort of people live in those houses? What 
are their ways and deportment? What is their talk? 
Much is said that is disheartening. These people are 
mostly the sons of provincial immigrants, people born 
among the vineyards of Burgundy or the lavender hills 
of Provence; their fathers had traditions, a peculiar 
accent, and racy old phrases which conjured up a 
rich background as they spoke. Sometimes quaintly 
dressed relations visited them, and often the old woman 
who waited at their tables had not parted with the head- 
gear of her valley. All this is gone. Modern civili- 
zation razes old ways as it does old houses; the sons 
of these new families copy the American lads they see 
in the rue de Rivoli, their conversation is said to be 
deliberately heartless and colourless, even the French 
they speak is emptied of its flavour. It is learned, not 
in the Place Maubert where Montaigne would linger 
listening to market women speaking even more pictur- 
esquely than he wrote, nor from Moliere, or La Fon- 
taine, or the familiar classics, but from the morning 
paper with its impersonal political language on the first 
page, and its columns of foreign news on the third, 
translated from blank international English by a night- 
clerk often as disarmed before French as he is before 
English, seeking security in vagueness, and letting the 
good old French words grow so thin under his drowsy 



268 The Return of the Light 

hand that they seem to have floated where they are on 
the metaphysical waves of the wireless. 

All this sounds very like transformation, and trans- 
formation for the worse. If young Frenchmen copy 
foreign fashions, lose the traditional French taste, are 
practical and money-making, suffer their language 
to lose flesh and colour, in a word look as modem as 
Australians, does it not mean that the Iron Age is too 
strong for any resistance, and that France will not be 
equal to her vocation? 

First of all, let it be remembered that these appear- 
ances have nothing to say to the two chief character- 
istics of contemporary youth in France, which are an 
instinctive aversion from words and an instinctive 
appreciation of energy. These seem to be vital, the 
rest is only appearances. But even these appearances 
ought to be qualified. 

To begin with, it is very likely that they will be 
ephemeral, because they are the products either of 
imitation or of transient conditions. The French have 
always been fond of imitations, which, however, leave 
their national temperament as intact as the carnival 
mask does their face. The two periods in French history 
which have left the most decidedly brilliant impression 
upon foreigners are the later part of Louis the Fif- 
teenth's reign and the Second Empire. Now, the smart 
people whom Walpole visited at Paris and Versailles 
showed such an Anglomania that he was at first amused, 
but gradually disgusted; and as to the Second Empire 
galaxy, it had a — to-day astonishing — partiality for the 
Prussian aristocrats, who were constantly welcomed 
at the Tuileries or at Compiegne. KZhaki, large boots, 
clean-shaving, the afiEectation of self-control, all these 
fashions will be replaced by others within a decade. 



The New Generation 269 

Then we ought to make allowance for the social modi- 
fications which are invariably attended with exaggera- 
tion and effort. In France, as in the rest of the world, 
the step onward from peasantry and simplicity produces 
unpleasant effects: affectation, a display of poor taste, 
the levelling uniformity. But this step is not the first, 
and those which came before were not very different. 
The turbaned old women from the South, whose con- 
versation seems to us so delightfully old-fashioned, 
would appear civilized and uninteresting beside their 
grandmothers; each generation sheds a few character- 
istics — which the next generation does not regret be- 
cause it has no idea of them — but originality is not 
attached to such appearances: when it fails us in the 
plain workman we find it in the well-dressed artist ; sin- 
cerity is the parent of originality, and no amount of 
civilization will prevent sincerity from occasionally 
bursting upon the world. The French language as we 
see it degraded in the newspapers is only the ghost of 
itself, but Fenelon and La Bruyere thought they saw 
the same phenomenon in their time, and yet the lan- 
guage survived in the works of Voltaire and Rousseau, 
Chateaubriand and Michelet, I shall point out later 
that at this present moment respect for words is much 
more general among writers than it was throughout the 
nineteenth century. 

The same may be said of the decadence in architect- 
ural taste : its chief cause is the recently acquired inde- 
pendence of classes which are rich enough to demand 
comfort and not developed enough to care for beauty. 
But while rows after rows of hideous houses dismay the 
sensitive vision, the delight of numberless artists in the 
quiet harmony of the old farm or the old country house 
is daily made more contagious, and must before long 



270 The Return of the Light 

result not only in rescuing what is left of the past but in 
forcing its imitation. 

We may safely conclude that mere fashions in cos- 
tume, language, and ways ought not to be given more 
importance than fashions have a right to. They must 
be put up with, like the weather, and if they are counter- 
acted let it be gently. But it would be a thousand 
times deplorable if seriousness, praticalness, and mis- 
trust of unreasoned impulses resulted, as some people 
contend they do, in moroseness, unintelligence, and 
apathy. A morose, unintelligent, apathetic France 
would have no business in Europe. But; this catas- 
trophe is very remote. In spite of superficial appear- 
ances magnified by paradoxical observers, the French 
are still gay. When they put on gravity the uncontrol- 
lable spirit soon breaks through, were it only in the in- 
ferior form of irony. But gravity is the pose of few 
circles. You will find no trace of it in its affected aspect 
outside the "world," literary milieus, and possibly 
sportsmen. When half a dozen Frenchmen are engaged 
in a real conversation the conversation is gay, and 
circumstances matter little. In spite of persecutions 
and confiscations, priests and nuns have lost nothing of 
the childlike light-heartedness which makes their chief 
charm, soldiers are gay, and workmen are only taciturn 
where they have to be, in the thundering factory, in 
the crowded train, in the busy hostile street. Select a 
sullen-looking navvy in a trench and ask him a few 
questions : in spite of his Syndicalism and of his prob- 
able antagonism to your class, it will be very extra- 
ordinary if in a minute or two you do not see him give 
a funny, good-humoured twist to his answers. I met 
once three straggling young scouts who probably would 
have looked duly Methodistical had they been with 



The New Generation 271 

their friends. Playing truant as they did, they were 
irresistible in their view of their irregular situation. 
The oldest one indulged in a comparison between his 
own kind and a party of American scouts who were just 
being entertained in Paris. Fanfan la Tulipe circa 
1750 would have explained his case with exactly the 
same insouciance. 

It is also the effect of mere appearances if the so- 
called loss of Idealism is said to have resulted in loss 
of the elan which belongs to the race. Propagandism, 
which Joseph de Maistre, a foreigner, noted as the chief 
French characteristic at the end of the eighteenth cen- 
tury, is still at the root of all French action and the 
fountain of French eloquence, but for the present it has 
lost its guiding formulae — the multiform embroidery 
of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity which dazzled the 
nineteenth century. The Third Republic has gradu- 
ally emptied them all of their dynamic force, and the 
patriotism which has taken their place in the last seven 
years is wise enough not to be loud. Certainly it is thus 
quiet merely because it differs from the Revanche spirit 
of 1887, in being much deeper and stronger. If there 
had been a war in 191 1 — not in 1906 — it would have 
been entered on in as brisk a spirit as can well be con- 
ceived. In default of a war, any great cause worth the 
name would easily bring together youthful energies, but 
careful analysis of the present situation in France re- 
veals the lack of any such cause, apart from the national 
peril. The disgust created by Radical politics is deep 
and universal, but its origin is so protean and confused 
that it escapes the popular grasp. 

Is there any more reason for fearing lest the French 
of the rising generation should have lost their ancestral 
capacity for abstracting and generalizing? Are they 



272 The Return of the Light 

going to fall, from sheer mistrust of verbiage and atten- 
tion to matter-of-fact realities, into what Carlyle 
called the "post-prandial" — precisely as opposed to the 
French — way of conceiving things? Is the argute loqui 
a gift which can be lost at a few years' notice? The 
very idea seems ludicrous. No generation was ever 
more full of generalizations about everything — itself 
included — than the present one. It would be a fault 
if it were not merely the national bias which nobody can 
resist. Take the three or four volumes which have been 
written about the recent developments, read any of the 
many works in which the private views of young 
writers — in default of literary schools — are summed up ; 
you will find them as conscious and systematized as 
if they had been dictated by a Condillac. The marvel 
is to see the identical sportsmen, who think so highly of 
action for action's sake, infer as complete a philosophy 
from their tendencies as if they were professional critics. 
As to the conversations one hears — say among officers — 
they are simply brimful of "ideas, " and as it is true, on 
the other hand, that theories or "views" are mis- 
trusted, it must be merely because the native pro- 
pensity has never been so unconscious of itself, so 
instinctive and rich. Surely its intimate connection 
with unintellectual human patriotism makes it far more 
active than it was in the days of Taine and Renan, when 
speculation ran riot. 

Let these croakers croak, and, in spite of childish 
affectations, do not let us suppose that Frenchmen are 
less French for being sensible and cool-headed; France 
had been herself for many centuries before she became 
infected with the intellectual diseases from which she is 
at present recovering. I hope that the reader sees 
clearly that the credit of the recovery, as I have en- 



The Church and France 273 

deavoured to show, does not belong entirely to the 
superior insight of the younger generation — practically 
the only men of fifty who have learned little or nothing 
by the experience of the last twenty years are limited 
politicians — but France as a nation gives to-day the 
impression of something young, whereas at the end of 
the nineteenth century it gave the impression of age, 
fatigue, and disillusionment. It is natural, therefore, 
that we should associate the characteristics of the 
country in this new state with its younger members. 
That these characteristics are not likely to vanish as 
superficial agitations — obviously political — have done 
before, there is every reason to suppose, and the 
greatest part of this volume is a defence of such 
hopes. 

10. Does the Church Play any Active Part in the Trans- 
formation oj France ? 

This question is one which sympathetic inquirers 
abroad constantly ask and about which they seem most 
uncertain, sometimes hearing uncritically sanguine ac- 
counts, sometimes unduly pessimistic rumours. It will 
be made clearer if we ask ourselves to what extent the 
Catholic Church is responsible for the reaction towards 
a higher morality, a more solid social order, and a better 
mental equilibrium which is the subject of this volume. 
Two descriptions will enable the reader to answer for 
himself. 

It is a fact that all the distinguished individuals 
whose conversion from indulgence to morals I have 
pointed out in another chapter have undergone a 
similar transformation with regard to religion. They 
may not be believers, most of them are not and will 



274 ' '^^" Rc'lurn of {he Light 

probably never be; they have been too di^cply tainted 
with the scvptieisni in vvhicli they wore bred, or tliey 
are bt)Lh lazy anil ciit ii-al, and they are afraid to lainieh 
— somewhat lat.c^ in the day — into researches which 
almost invariably dcMnaiul an undivided and passionate 
attention, bnt t.lu>y spi^ik of n^li^^ion, of the Church, of 
pritsts, monks, and nuns with siMiousncss and resi)ect. 
INol only men liki> |nk\s Lcmatlrc or Barr^s — not to 
speak of Bour^ct who may have scmi-politit-al reasons 
for leaning ti> that side, but typical Parisians like Capus 
or Lavedan, men who once represented that vanished 
entit\' tlic houlevard, and even at presiMit aim hardly 
hii;luM- than at being the sages of the gnvn-room and 
the divines of tlie J'^ii^ciro or L'Jlliistralion, men whose 
attitude is tin' more easily ri)piril because in most cases 
it is only a nvllcction from movements in society itself, 
show an unfeigned respect for the tiMK^ts, i^thical teach- 
ing, and constitution of the Church. Twenty years 
ago writers of this stamp could not refrain from shrugs 
and smiles, which meant, as plainl)' as elaborate 
treatises might have, that there were things in which a 
modtMii mail couKl not possibly believe — they abound 
in the early writings of Jules Lcmaltre — all that could 
be hoped from them was the piety of Renan which the 
Catholics of those days resented as the worst kind of 
blasphemy. At the present nunnent, graces of this 
description are left ti> country school teachers. A man 
in M. Aidard's position loses, e\tMi from the scientific 
point of view, more than is just, because he will sport 
in La Lantcrnc the wit of M. Cardinal. Look over the 
list of the French Academy as it stands to-day and 
compare it w'ith what it was towards the date of Renan's 
elix'tion; \.\\c diiTerenee is startling: who are the Vol- 
tairians of the present day? Anatole France, of course, 



The Church and France 275 

but he has given up the Academy long ago; M. Lavisse, 
but how careful he is not to give any offence; M. 
Hanotaux, but his superficial unbelief made room for 
explicit belief in his book on Jeanne d'Arc; M. Hervieu, 
but he never printed a line against religion. The next 
to be quoted ought to be M. Richepin, but he would be 
very angry if anybody took the entirely literary violence 
of his early verses seriously. And the numbering must 
end there. The thirty-five other Academicians are 
either practising Catholics or favourable to Catholicism. 
This state of affairs would be found to be the same 
in all the literary circles of Paris, in the lecture-rooms, 
in the provincial universities, in the local literary 
academies. Men inclined to speak harshly or satirically 
of religion feel that it is better form in them to refrain, 
and they do refrain. In order to find exceptions we have 
to go down to Universites Populaires where an un- 
frocked priest or a Syndicalist with a philosophy may 
innocently retail Haeckel to a not very enthusiastic 
audience. The transformation obvious in Literature is 
hardly less so in the Press. Apart from La Lanterne, 
V Homme Libre — edited by M. Clemenceau — and pos- 
sibly, on a few occasions, papers as ignored as Le Gil 
Bias has become, the Parisian periodicals have gradu- 
ally adopted at least an apparently sincere neutrality 
in religious matters. The radical suppression of any 
anti-Catholic articles in the Revue des Deux-Mondes 
was the very remarkable forerunner of this change from 
the day when F. Brunetiere took the Review over, after 
the death of Buloz. The Figaro, the Eclair, the Echo 
de Paris are completely different from their former 
selves. The few people who complain that the stories in 
Le Matin and Le Journal have become so proper that 
even girls may read them, do not seem to miss the old 



276 The Return of the Light 

anti-Catholic lampoons once habitual to these papers. 
Only a few years ago Le Matin was justly regarded as 
deliberately and craftily working against religion. The 
appearance of the journal Excelsior, a Catholic rival, 
compelled it to adopt another policy which is said to 
have been officially notified by the proprietors to the 
Archbishop of Paris; certainly it is a far cry from the 
miniature essays of M. Vautel — a genre which suits 
the French reader admirably — to those of the late M. 
Harduin in point of orthodoxy. The accomplished busi- 
ness men who conduct the paper are anti-Christian 
Jews, no doubt, and this still appears sometimes too 
clearly; but their commercial instinct as well as the 
intelligence of some of their subordinates shows them 
the advisability of discretion in religious matters. A 
very widely circulated weekly, Les Annates, edited by 
Madame Brisson, the daughter of the rabid anti-clerical 
Sarcey, having given offence on a few minor points to 
Catholic readers, not only made public amends for the 
slip but applied to the Paris Archbishop for a priest 
who would correct the proofs from the theological 
standpoint. The Journal des Debats has become a 
liberal but decidedly Catholic organ. Many such in- 
stances could be quoted. Suffice it to say that no 
popular journalist can be named who is anti-Catholic 
in his writings, and the best known of that kind, the 
great anarchist of fifteen years ago, Urbain Gohier, 
points out religion as the only solution to the moral and 
the social problems of to-day. If we look back to the 
history of the past three centuries we shall find that this 
neutral or sympathetic attitude of the intellectual ad- 
viser of the man in the street is an unheard-of pheno- 
menon. Since the days of the Renaissance they have 
been either resolute believers or no less resolutely* 



The Church and France 277 

though not always openly, the reverse. Broad re- 
ligiousness in Frenchmen grown up outside the pale is a 
feature of the last few years, and it shows that at least 
prejudice has come to a standstill. 

Parallel with this transformation is one which was 
inevitable in the public spirit. The violent hostility 
against the Church which prevailed among the aristo- 
cracy in the days of Saint-Evremond and Fontenelle 
among the upper bourgeoisie at the time of the Ency- 
clopaedists, among the teaching body under Louis- 
Philippe and Napoleon the Third, and which finally 
gained the lower strata under the influence of Gam- 
betta. Ferry, and Paul Bert, has almost ceased to be 
visible in France. Of course, it still exists in the 
Chamber among the Radicals, and in the narrow pro- 
vincial circles which keep Radicalism alive against 
the whole country as four or five Jacobins would keep 
up the Terror in a town against the whole population. 
But you have to look for it, and its rampant attitude 
of the days when M. Comtes was master is only an 
irritating memory. Those people have long lost the 
contagiousness of faith, and all their energy comes from 
the desperateness of their greed. This cannot last long; 
let any fortuitous circumstance dispel the equivocations 
which are to-day their only protection, and even the 
pitiably dog-like submissiveness of the country elector 
to his master, good or bad, will lose its last support. 

The Freemasons who even in the not far away days 
of the espionage system were so much spoken about, so 
dreaded on one side and so courted on the other, who 
reigned almost supreme in the Chamber and Senate, 
and were not afraid of excommunicating a politician 
for dissenting from them in a division, who thought 
themselves so powerful that they had finished by taking 



278 The Return of the Light 

pride in the terror they caused, could hardly aspire 
nowadays to the r61e of scarecrows. The Radicals, it is 
true, understudy them, but their old parts are all worn 
out, and no amount of Masonic brotherhood will give 
freshness to denunciations of the Inquisition when it is 
the Income Tax that is at issue. The Lodge as a rival 
of the Church has had its time, and if ever it resumes 
that position it will have to go to school to better 
teachers than it used to have. 

There are no vestiges of the anti-clerical feeling 
which was positively in the air as long as the lower 
classes identified social progress with politics, and 
insisted on seeing in the Church the last bulwark of 
tyranny. Priests are not popular, except in some of the 
poorer quarters, but they are no longer gibed at when 
they go about; no songs are heard against them, and 
when you happen — perhaps once in a year — to see an 
advertisement for some feidlleton recalling the days 
when a Jesuit was the villain of the play, you involun- 
tarily wonder if it did not get there by mistake. Even 
Syndicalists with the poor materialistic notions which 
often accompany their social doctrine are only anti- 
clericals in a sort of neutral way. They have long ceased 
to regard the idea of heaven as in the way of terrestrial 
improvement and have no more objection to priests 
than to astronomers; their quarrel is with the Socialist 
deputies who exploit them and with the belated work- 
men who will not increase their numbers; the Syllabus 
is nothing to them. 

As to the more refined circles, they affect the greatest 
reverence for everything ecclesiastical; though a mild 
indecency is rather the rule among them, it is fashion- 
able not to blame the Bishops when they blame the 
tango; it is good form on the contrary to try to give 



The Church and France 279 

them some sort of satisfaction, were it only by changing 
the name of the objectionable mode or pastime, and you 
should see how zealously aspiring young hostesses take 
the cue. 

Another very striking feature is the reserved attitude 
of the public with regard to the internal divisions of 
Catholics about politics or discipline. At other times 
the newsf)aijcrs would have been filled with angry or 
bantering comments on such questions as the condem- 
nation of the Sillon, the substitution of Pius the Tenth's 
indifference for Leo the Thirteenth's sympathy with the 
Republic, the exceptional mode of electing the Bishops, 
the attempts at founding a Catholic party, especially the 
prohibition made to the Abbe Lemire to stand for 
the Chamber; now hardly anything is said on those 
subjects. Is it because the country has become so in- 
different that it would not care for discussion? Or is it 
rather because there is a sort of tacit understanding 
among the French not to make capital of anything 
likely to bring the Church once more unpleasantly to 
the forefront? The latter, no doubt; but the reader will 
see this more clearly later on. For the present I am 
merely stating facts, and it is a fact that the old feeling 
of hostility or superiority to the Church is no longer 
discernible in our atmosphere. 

All that I have said so far concerned rather the 
passive or receptive portions of the country than its 
active influences. What of these? Are they friendly or 
antagonistic? What is the attitude of people intelligent 
enough to be interested in religious problems? 

The honest answer is that there is very little said on 
these subjects. Catholics have become reticent about 
their theological views since the publication of the 



28o The Return of the Light 

Encyclical against Modernism. The difference be- 
tween the young priests ordained in the last seven or 
eight years and their predecessors is very great; the 
latter were full of the necessity of a proper apologetic 
to influence the highly intellectual modern man, the 
former are active propagandists of a decidedly pastoral 
type. Not one of them has begun to make his mark as 
a scholar, but several have attained to distinction 
almost on leaving the seminary, as leaders or organizers. 
The great theological production which we saw be- 
tween the years 1895 and 1905 has dwindled down to 
the usual output, and nobody, outside a small circle of 
men who cannot fancy the prospect of keeping their 
manuscripts under lock and key after Horace's ninth 
year, seems to mind. 

The same inactivity prevails in the opposite camp. 
A Catholic untrained in scientific or biblical criticism 
need not be afraid of appearing in the circles in which 
he was sure not very long ago to be taken to task. His 
former opponents have had to make up their minds 
about the truth of Brunetiere's once famous indictment 
of Scientism; it seems ludicrous to-day that people 
should have expected the last word on the vital pro- 
blems to be said by physicists or biologists. Bergson 
and William James have come, and with the return of 
Pluralism the sense of mystery has reappeared, along 
with a lassitude at the mere idea, as Bossuet says, of 
everlastingly seeking and never resting satisfied. This 
is not the time for speculation. Philosophizing de- 
mands peace and the prospect of a long leisure, and 
what everybody seems to be craving is merely a little 
truce and breathing space to await less impatiently the 
final settling of multiform difficulties. The typical 
positivist who could not meet belief without challeng- 



The Church and France 281 

ing it at once to state its reasons is a fossil. As to the 
sceptic who disdained launching into discussions because 
all creeds were absurd, his point of view has changed; 
he is as silent as before, but his motive is different ; all 
creeds, he thinks, are wedded to insoluble problems, 
and he is respectful where he used to be supercilious. 

Even the war which the Radicals in or out of office 
still wage against the Church is not what it used to be. 
Of course, the Doumergue Cabinet could not resist the 
temptation to gain a little time and please a few of its 
friends at a small expense by suppressing a batch or two 
of the surviving religious orders. M. Doumergue also 
repealed the two decrees taken under the preceding 
Ministry, concerning the rights of fathers to have some- 
thing to say as to the choice of school books, and the 
advisability for naval officers to hoist the flag at mid- 
mast on Good Friday when ships of other nations did 
the same; but this is only the ungentlemanliness of the 
Radical who does you a good turn without loving you, 
and an ill one just because it may please somebody else ; 
there is no faith in it. The moment there is the least 
appearance of a possible resistance no action is taken. 
No government, however Radical, would dare take 
measures against the Catholic Associations de Peres de 
famille, or against the Catholic schools; the splendid 
headway which persecution made under M. Combes is 
lost. Meanwhile several steps have been taken since 
1 9 10 which showed a wish on the part of the successive 
governments to conciliate Catholics. The courts have 
invariably and with a sort of complacent coquetry given 
proofs of impartiality in cases wherein ecclesiastics were 
involved, and more than once have taken Canon Law 
into implicit account ; the military chaplains have been 
quietly reinstated, at least in case of war; the Barthou 



282 The Return of the Light 

Cabinet refused to withhold the allowances granted to 
the Beyrout University conducted by French Jesuits; 
the feast of Jeanne d'Arc has been declared a national 
festival — a measure which had repeatedly been thrown 
out so far; finally it would not be difficult to adduce 
instances of collaboration in the Near East between the 
French and the religious authorities; the decoration 
by the Government of a Levantine Bishop, Monsignor 
Chebli, and the distinctions given to the Lazarist Lobry 
by the French Embassy at Constantinople had a very 
marked meaning. The universal feeling is that many an 
unbelieving deputy who advocated disestablishment 
would gladly undo what he has done, if deputies could 
make abstraction from the sordid sides of their trade. 

As a conclusion we may say that the CathoHc Church 
has fewer enemies at the present moment and more 
friends outside her own pale than she has had since the 
lull after 1848 — when the feeling seems to have been 
very similar, and the moral atmosphere which the 
French wish for — when they do not actually produce 
it — is very like her own. 

All this is encouraging, no doubt, but it sounds more 
negative than positive, and the reader may be saying 
to himself that the action of the Church in France is 
more like a magnetic influence than a visible interfer- 
ence. This impression is correct; if it were not, the 
numerous English well-wishers of the Church would 
not ask, so anxiously and doubtfully, as they generally 
do, how she stands and what are her prospects. It 
would be unjust to deny that she makes conquests ; the 
conversion of men like Bourget, Claudel, Peguy, Francis 
Jammes, Psichari, and many imitators of less note but 
of intelligence and culture, is a tangible and very im- 



The Church and France 283 

pressive resiilt of efforts in valuable quarters, but this 
progress compared with the situation of Catholicism 
in happier times or countries cannot be called con- 
siderable. Practising Catholics are still little more than 
a fraction of the French population, about a third; 
most French people are christened and buried by a 
priest, but between those two terms they stay away, 
and their ignorance and indifference are appalling; 
politically speaking, their numbers are so small that 
one had better not mention them. So, compared with 
the position of their co-religionists in Germany, Bel- 
gium, or even in the United States, the French Catho- 
lics not only have no power, which goes without saying, 
but they have hardly any weight ; there is not one con- 
stituency in twenty in which they can control an 
election. They begin indeed to have their own Press. 
The Croix is one of the big dailies, and several provin- 
cial papers are so thriving as to appear comparatively 
influential, and yet influential they seldom are outside 
the few countrysides I have just referred to; or if they 
are, it is by showing their conservative rather than 
their religious tendencies. As a body of men with whom 
the leaders of the great political factions have to reckon, 
therefore, they hardly count. Being scattered, that is 
to say unable to show anything like an imposing front 
in an emergency, they are practically invisible, and this 
accounts for the ignorance of them in which even well- 
informed and travelled foreigners remain. 

It would be more than unjust to say that the Church 
of France is, in her active representatives, below par. 
Her clergy have never been more regular; in a great 
many places they live in circumstances which would 
revolt even their poorest peasants, and they never say 
a word; they work and persevere with a simple cheer- 



284 The Return of the Light 

fulness which often strikes as perfectly heroic if one 
remembers that the hope of better days does not even 
begin to dawn ; the seminaries are wonderfully managed 
considering the difficulties their rectors have had to 
encounter, losing their professors in a great many 
dioceses after the expulsion of the religious orders, and 
having to vacate their houses everywhere after the 
Separation; the teaching is on an average better than 
it was, and the spirit of the young men is exactly what 
the Bishops want it to be; discipline seems much more 
natural to them than to the preceding generation. As 
to the religious communities which survive on semi- 
tolerance or are dispersed and awaiting the chance of 
reforming, it is too heart-rending to think of their 
hardships to weaken them by expression. A great book 
coiild be made by most of us merely collecting the 
instances of simple courage which have come to our 
personal knowledge. But all this expense of patience 
in numberless forms is humble and unknown; it keeps 
the Church alive, but the effort is unperceived and the 
results are obscure. Certainly many people, friends or 
foes, were surprised at seeing the Church survive when 
her ruin had been looked upon as a matter of course, but 
her existence is, as might have been expected, without 
eclat. The roll of her famous men is short. There may 
be somewhere a country priest as holy as the cure 
d'Ars was sixty years ago, but no prodigies are worked 
in his little church, and we do not see pilgrims from 
every part of Europe flock to his confessional. The last 
mystic writers worth the name — and how inferior to 
Olier! — were Monseigneur Gay and Pere Libermann. 
We do not see any great bishops with genius enough 
and eloquence enough to play the part of Pie or Du- 
panloup. The preachers we hear are good and holy, 



The Church and France 285 

they tend toward that simplicity which is the condition 
of efficiency, but how far they are from a Lacordaire, 
even a Ravignan! Their fame seldom travels beyond 
the few churches in which they periodically appear. 
What Catholic writer can we place beside Veuillot? It 
is a strange thing that the literary champions of the 
Church, men of the type of Bourget, Bazin, Bordeaux, 
or the poets Claudel or Jammes, should be laymen 
rather than ecclesiastics, and that the most eloquent 
of all, the advocate of the country churches, Maurice 
Barres, should not be a believer at all ! The only realm 
in which Catholics achieve distinction is, in spite of the 
rarefaction I have mentioned above, ecclesiastical erudi- 
tion. The Dictionnaire de la Foi Catholique, the 
Dictionnaire de la Bible, the Dictionnaire d'Apologetique, 
the Dictionnaire d' Archeologie Chretienne, the Diction- 
naire d'Histoire Ecclesiastique in process of publication 
or just published are great undertakings, and the names 
of the Abbes Batiffol, Touzard, Tixeront, Jacquier, 
Saltet, Michelet, of the Dominicans, Lagrange, Vin- 
cent, Dhorme, of the Jesuits, Lebreton, Prat, De 
Grandmaison, Condamin, and Cavallera, are greatly 
respected. But outside a small circle of specialists 
who knows either the works or the names? 

It is not surprising therefore that the Church should 
be almost hidden in France. No numbers, no social 
or political power, no fascination of great talents, all 
these negations combine in making her position one of 
great possibilities rather than achievements. And it is 
not surprising either that without some guidance and 
proper illumination outsiders should have no idea of 
her situation. 

We are therefore placed before this apparent paradox: 
a Church destitute of every means for captivating the 



286 The Return of the Light 

imagination and working upon hesitating wills, and a 
country which fifteen years ago rebelled against it in 
every possible way now showing its influence in all the 
manifestations of its inner life. 

Paradoxes in real life do not exist; they are only 
logical paradoxes with which our astonishment at some- 
thing unexpected will amuse itself. It goes without 
saying that the Church in her present reduced condition 
in no wise recalls the powerful society she was in the 
thirteenth century ; but were she a thousand times more 
overshadowed in France than she is at present, it 
would not prevent her from being an irresistible force. 
Was there a great deal of real antagonism in this 
country when persecution was raging? Everybody 
acquainted with the true feelings of the French knows 
that there was not. Anti-clericalism was political, and 
it never spread far outside political circles. Let this 
kind of politics wear itself out, and anti-clericalism was 
sure to pall. Let the quiet indifference of the bourgeois 
be alarmed at the sight of confiscations, and anti- 
clericalism was sure to become frightening. Let the 
intelligence of the cultured get a surfeit of materialistic 
confidence, of ever-disappointing promises to explain 
or explain away everything, and sympathy with mys- 
teries was bound to succeed the craving after too 
simple theories. Let a great national shock like the 
Tangier affair bring home to millions of patriots the 
necessity of being united instead of persecuting one 
another, and the idea of petty molestations could not 
but become sickening. 

All the possibiHties of anti-clericalism lie in certain 
memories and certain fears. The memories are not, as 
people will often imagine, those of the Ancien Regime; 
these are quite forgotten. But there are still men who 



The Church and France 287 

remember the state of affairs described in Taine's early 
letters, and against which he is never tired of inveigh- 
ing. Their fear is of a Church powerful enough to 
control civil power, or possibly to present mysticism 
too universally. Take away that fear, and the French- 
man of to-day, like his ancestors — the mediaeval man 
and the critical seventeenth-century scholar — leans 
immediately towards the Church; for on one hand he 
may dislike dry theology, but he loves directing his 
actions by the light of a fixed doctrine, and on the other 
he cannot possibly sever morals from its religious basis. 
Now it matters little whether the Church is strong and 
numerous or weak and scanty ; the Frenchman does not 
look upon her as a body, the object of the statistician's 
or the social philosopher's study — all these details he 
ignores — she is part of his traditional life, and when he 
goes back to her, it is as a man goes back to his earliest 
experience. Indeed, as unreasoned as a natural process 
is the movement towards Christianity we are witness- 
ing; it ought not to be looked upon as the passage of a 
man from a house to another house, but as the gradual 
and almost unconscious return of a family to a disused 
but very convenient room. Criticalness is totally 
absent from it. 

The question naturally arises: What is the Church 
doing in the obscure condition which has just been 
described? Even if she is not very active in France as a 
body, she must have some sort of activity of which 
individuals at least cannot but be aware, and the 
knowledge of which is sure to make the present more 
intelligible and the future easier to foresee. 

A brief summary will help the reader to realize how 
far the Church does influence individuals, and to what 



i-'^ 



288 The Return of the Light 

extent she is even beginning to make her presence felt 
in the State in her new situation as an independent 
community. 

Everybody knows that Napoleon's Concordat with 
Pope Pius the Sixth worked in two ways. After nearly 
ten years' disappearance it restored the Church to an 
official position, but this Church had been so diminished 
during the Revolution, she had lost so completely the 
wealth, knowledge, and corporate traditions which had 
given her independence even under Louis the Four- 
teenth, that the State must inevitably have the upper 
hand over her. The consequence was that when the 
State was favourably disposed towards her, as under 
the Restoration, or in the early part of the Second 
Empire, she appeared powerful and prosperous ; when 
on the contrary the civil power was jealous of her, as 
under Louis-Philippe, or really hostile, as during the 
Third Republic, she seemed to be despised. In either 
case everybody was conscious that she was dependent, 
and being dependent she had no enterprise and but 
little energy. The Bishops, being appointed by the 
Government, were often reduced to the humiliating 
position of "prefects in purple"; they were carefully 
kept isolated, communicating with Rome under difficul- 
ties, and hardly at all between themselves; the priests 
also were mostly appointed and always maintained by 
the State; their churches and houses were not on their 
hands; so though poor they lived an easy peaceful life; 
their flocks saw them through the haze of ancient habit 
or ancient prejudice, as institutions rather than persons, 
and respect rather than obedience was the keynote of 
their intercourse; besides, the rectors, apart from 
exceptional periods when Government used them as 
political delegates, seldom demanded obedience; the 



The Church and France 289 

tradition since the Concordat was for them to stay 
at home a great deal, and when the times were against 
them they merely took refuge in the hope of a "good 
Government." 

All this means that their attitude was on the whole 
unimpeachable, but differed entirely from that of the 
really influential clergy as seen in Germany, Belgium, 
Ireland, Canada, and the United States. 

It is not surprising therefore that they should have 
been inclined to accept the Separation Law when it 
was passed in 1905, and that they should have been 
somewhat bewildered when, the year after. Pope Pius 
the Tenth imposed upon them the virile but unexpected 
course of not accepting it. The consequence was 
liberty, but liberty with all its burdens. Bishops with 
not a farthing of the old Church property left found 
themselves confronted with the necessity of procuring 
accommodation for their seminarians, and money 
enough to keep their priests; poor country rectors in 
poorer neighbourhoods were turned out of their houses 
and had not only to look after themselves but to pro- 
vide for the expenditure involved in the worship. For 
the first time since the very beginnings of the Church 
in Merovingian Gaul, the French clergy had to seek an 
economic basis for an existence which had been purely 
spiritual because it was perfectly secure. 

It seemed strange at first to see the priests going 
from house to house collecting money for the Denier du 
Culte. Money plays in the life of the French peasant 
so important a part that it is proverbial, but money 
transactions are generally buried in deep secrecy, and 
it was a shock to see the man who for ages had been the 
most remote from anything worldly engaged in financial 
manoeuvring before the eyes of a whole parish. Yet the 
19 



290 The Return of the Light 

tradition is established already; the comparatively 
small amount necessary to secure for each priest the 
thirty to forty pounds with which he is satisfied is 
found in almost every diocese, and one immediate 
result of applying to the faithful for assistance was to 
make them feel, for the first time, an interest in the life 
of their Church, and to render Cathohc Associations 
possible. They now exist in every diocese, and except- 
ing the well-known countrysides in Central France in 
which religious indifference is the rule, practically in 
every parish. The old vestry councils have been re- 
placed by more active committees, no longer exclusively 
consulted on parochial expenses, but interested in 
religious progress generally, and comparing notes in 
occasional congresses. The anti-clericalism of a great 
many school teachers almost automatically produced 
the creation of Associations de Peres de famille, which 
only see that the books used and the teaching given do 
not exceed the limits of neutrality, but which the evi- 
dent purity of their point of view has made, from the 
first, exceptionally influential. In the richer or more 
religious dioceses there exists a certain number of 
Catholic schools which the State not only does not help 
but tries — vainly enough, it must be confessed — to 
suppress or impede. Wherever such a school can be 
founded the parochial life shows remarkable intensity. 
Women have done more than the men for the re- 
organization of the Church. The Ligue Patriotique des 
Frangaises numbers more than half a million women 
who have managed so far to keep away from politics, 
and show unparalleled activity. Very few are the 
villages in which they do not help the priest in hearing 
the children their Catechism, and every now and then 
do not get some Parisian lady member to give a public 



The Church and France 291 

lecture in a hired room, a great novelty and a great 
attraction in rural districts, where the kinematograph 
only begins to penetrate. In most of the larger villages 
the priests have been able to build a special room for 
such entertainments, and the presence of this building, 
which is the first visible evidence of Catholic activity 
in its new form, strikes the rustic mind more than any- 
thing else. I have seen people comment excitedly on 
the appearance outside a railway station of a plain 
house destined for the Catholic railwaymen. The 
superb churches or schools which they might have 
admired a few years ago, and which had also been built 
from private subscriptions, did not strike the popular 
imagination so vividly as the prosaic sign implying that 
railwaymen are not afraid of calling themselves be- 
lievers. Wherever there is a beginning of organization, 
something to show, as the humble propagandists put 
it, the clergy find it easy enough to bring together a 
number of individuals whom mere preaching used never 
to reach. In many industrial towns, where the men are 
naturally grouped by their work, it is not exceptional at 
Easter to see no less than seven or eight hundred men 
in church together. These results, brought about by 
the gradual employment of association — a discovery of 
yesterday in France — and by the inevitable contact of 
the priests with their people, are of course very local 
and hardly perceptible outside the parish, but they 
are the real commencement of Catholic life as distin- 
guished from the mere Catholic tradition, and as such 
are highly interesting to record, only eight years after 
the Disestablishment. 

Besides activity on the lines of association, there is 
another great feature which I can say to be characteris- 
tic of post-Separation Catholicism: that is rigidly en- 



292 The Return of the Light 

forced concentration. This concentration, needless to 
say, is the work of Rome, and Pope Pius the Tenth is 
largely responsible for it. It was the Pope who, in 
1906, decided that the Separation Law should not be 
accepted, and several measures — the direct appoint- 
ment of the Bishops by Rome, for instance, and the 
postponement of plenary assemblies of the French epis- 
copate — were evidently intended to keep the French 
clergy immediately under the influence of the Papacy. 
The Roman authorities probably thought it wiser that 
the French clergy, so long used to the tutelage of the 
State, should not be left too much to themselves, during 
these first few years after their liberation. 

It is needless to recall that the war waged against 
Modernism showed the same protecting spirit, but the 
opposition made by Rome to what is called inter- 
confessionalism may be less known; the condemnation 
of the Sillon, the prohibition made to clerics against 
attending lectures in the State universities, the con- 
demnation of the Maison Sociale founded by the well- 
known Sister Mercedes, had no other object than to 
keep Catholics among themselves, and discourage them 
from joining, qiia Catholics, even excellent works 
initiated by other communions or merely undenomina- 
tional. Clearly the wish of the Pope is for Catholics to 
appear before the world as primarily believers. 

It was inevitable that such a policy should find 
exaggerated and consequently dangerous champions. 
Half a score of men, most of them journalists, and all of 
them arrogating to themselves the mission they take, 
sometimes very doubtful morally but invariably loud, 
have had no difficulty in bullying the Church of France 
in the name of obedience to the Pope, inventing new 
heresies, charging their opponents with Episcopalism 



The Church and France 293 

when they could not accuse them of Modernism or 
LiberaHsm, abusing people worthy of all respect, one 
after the other, until they came to speak of the Count 
de Mun as a dangerous Liberal, and to denounce 
learned Jesuits as Modernists in disguise. This crew — 
in spite of the fact that one of them was found to be a 
hypocrite leading the loosest life while affecting ortho- 
doxy, and finally getting turned out of his order and 
reappearing the next day as an agnostic journalist — 
might have gone on spreading terror through the 
Episcopate and the Catholic Press, if the Jesuits on the 
staff of the Etudes Religieuses had not published^ a 
powerful article which, although written in self-de- 
fence, was nevertheless a general indictment. This 
article produced universal relief, and it is to be hoped 
that henceforward the Bishops, and not a handful of 
cowardly bulHes, will interpret the Pope's policy for 
the Church of France. 

Is there anything like a definite political action of the 
French clergy? No. Pius the Tenth differed from his 
predecessor insomuch as he did not recommend ad- 
hesion to the Republican constitution, but he did not 
recommend any constitution whatever. He insisted 
on Catholics preserving their political liberty, and being 
at will Republicans, Monarchists, or Imperiahsts, so 
long as they promoted the Catholic liberties. This 
evidently cannot serve as a basis for any popular 
politics that might be called CathoHc. But nobody is 
sorry. Practising Catholics who are numerous enough 
to maintain the moral influence of their Church in 
France are not numerous enough nor politically united 
enough to appear at any advantage at an election. 

' Vide Etudes Religieuses, 5 Janvier 191 4. 



294 '^ li^ Return of the Light 

Tlio (lUoiiipt made by two very good men, Colonel 
Keller and M. de Bellomayre, to found a Catholic 
party that would be a real party, was a woeful failure. 
So the French Catholics have no political programme. 
There may be a few Bishops who are personally Mon- 
archists, and the general disaffection with the Republic 
throughout the country has certainly cooled the loyalist 
cntlmsiasm which greeted Leo the Thirteenth's adhe- 
sion to the regime; also the slow but steady antagonism 
against the ideas, dreams, and vague modes of speech 
of the French Revolution which has been the fashion 
since Taine amounts to a perpetual criticism of the 
Democracy, and Catholics hear it as everybody else; 
but all this is not enough to make unity where there 
is variety, and only Radicals can seriously denounce 
clericalism where they see reaction. Only in two 
points have the Bishops conducted a resistance — which 
proved successful — against certain provincial news- 
papers like the D6p^chc of Toulouse, and against the 
selection by school teachers of anti-Catholic books. 
There was no question of the Republican constitution 
there, and the Bishops were helped in their campaign 
by notoriously Republican organs. 

One might go into many more details; the school 
question alone would require a long chapter to be 
presented in its entirety, but details are not necessary 
for my present purpose, which is merely to ascertain 
how far the moral trend of France is influenced by the 
progress of the Church, and on the contrary they might 
impair the clearness of our vision. In troubled periods 
like this, details often take an undue importance and 
mislead rather than enlighten. Suffice it to say that the 
Church not only has survived the crisis in which she 
was expected to perish, but that she is doing better 



The Church and France 295 

than she did for a long time, having galvanized dor- 
mant forces, and living as near as possible to her 
spiritual ideal. Slowly and silently she grows used to 
her new conditions and becomes conscious of her new 
self. She has no wide designs, no sublime conquering 
prospects; her members are too much occupied with 
trivial problems which have to be solved day after day, 
for any of them to reveal the outlook of a Saint Bernard. 
So she goes on, cheerful and childlike as usual in the 
everyday life of her members, guarded behind a pro- 
tecting zone of strict theology in her corporate existence. 
But of all this the "world" outside is ignorant, facing 
its own difficulties and viewing the Church as a home 
tradition, not at all as a society in the making; its 
development and her development are parallel pheno- 
mena with hardly any contact. 

What the future will be it would be futile to prophesy. 
Who can tell whether the present mood of France is a 
beginning or only a phase ? Materialism as a philosophi- 
cal doctrine is outlived undoubtedly, and patriotism 
takes in numberless instances the Christian form of self- 
denial. But who would be sanguine enough to read in 
these changes a return to the Gospel and its detach- 
ment from the earth? The Bishops complain that 
vocations to the priesthood are becoming rarer every- 
where, and some people account for the decrease by the 
military laws, and by the timidity which the persecu- 
tion of ten years ago left in the minds of Catholic 
parents. But is this a sufficient explanation? Is it not 
true that the self-indulgence which has come every- 
where along with iinproved economic conditions, and 
with everlasting discussions about man's rights apart 
from his duties, is becoming universal ? Is it not possi- 
ble that the decrease in clerical vocations arises from 



2tX) The Rrliirn of [he Lii;lil 

j^r;nlu;il rosislaiirr to our of tlu> sh'iclosl injiiiu'lions of 
{\\r C'lmrrh, ;iiul that this pi-oMtMii is iiitiinaU'ly bouiul 
vvilli 1 1)1' lai-^cM- (nu'stioii of dc^population? J^'aniilios 
witli Olio rliilil will liartll\- (Knliratr their one son to the 
yorvioc t>t" llu' Chiiirli, nor will llio Clmivb bo much in- 
cIIiuhI to look to sin'li l"oi- luM- iiiiiiislors ov cvvn fliani- 
l)ioiis. 'I'luMV is Utile (louht hut this will bo tho crux of 
tho noar fiituro; Catliolio thooloi;y olTors no loop-hole 
of osoaiH% anil yot llio iiiolination to forj^ot it appears 
tniivorsal. If this inolination boootnos stronj^or, not 
only will tlio tlillioulty to koop up tho nntnbors of the 
clorj^y grow worse and wonse, but tln^ (]nality of the 
Catholio family will (.lo(eni>rale, for subtle selfishness 
oorrui^ts all that is more oharaoteristioally Christian, 
atui i>nly leax'os intaol rosivetabU^ (."ont'orinity. Eco- 
nomisin, with its imiltifonu eonsiH|iKMiees, iiiuloubtodly 
is the most terrible obstaolo that Christianity has as 
yot onoounteroci, and minor phonomona are merely 
indioations of its magnitude. 

Ihit, oil the t^tluM- hand, a saint may arise. There is 
enough self-forgot fulness bordering on heroism in the 
diwot ion of the olorgy to their work to make the hope a 
l>i-obability, and who can foretell the effeet on a genera- 
tit)n which may abhor poverty, but does not seem 
afraid of death iti the cause of an ideal? Certainly the 
hope of the future tloes not lie to-day — as it did in the 
m^t remote past when everything was hanging on 
intolligonoe and theories -in an adaptation of belief to 
science, but in the superiority of belief as a source of 
heroism over the mediocrity of economic philosophies. 
The sight of a saint might change into religious abnega- 
tion the energies which are so far limited to patriotic 
courage. We can only wish and ho]ie, but it is a fortu- 
nate ooinoiileiiee that just when France as a nation 



The Church and France 297 

feels the need of an ujjlifUn;^ f;i,iUj ih^; '•]'-;j;o:;itary of the 
ancestral creed should bf; lliviuyli ]/;r//;iii.iori ^j.nd j;ov- 
erty as pure a medium as can well be uuu.ym(-A. 'ihis 
at least is a fact, if all the rest be only hopes, and it is 
speakin^^ from the mere historic standpoint to say that 
the Church seldom, if ever, had such rare opx^ortunities. 



DIVISION B. — MORE CONSCIOUS MANIFESTATIONS OF THE 
NEW SPIRIT 

I. The Return of French Literature to its Traditional 

Spirit 

That there is an ethical change not only in French 
literature, but in the French i)ress and in the French 
spirit generally, is a fact which I have shown in previous 
chapters; what I wish to investigate is whether, along- 
side of this moral and probably pragmatic change, 
there is not another, of a purely intellectual or artistic 
character, which would matter even more; for nations, 
like individuals, will sometimes feel that it is useful for 
them to act right, whereas thinking right is a vital 
process through which they cannot go at will, and the 
consequences of which are immeasurably further- 
reaching. 

It seems to me that the French think more according 
to their tradition and temperament at the present 
moment than they have done for a long period. 

Let any Englishman ask himself what the word 
French connotes in his mind; I am certain that in 
nineteen cases out of twenty he will find that it is 
intelligence, wit, brilliance, a certain dash, a certain 
outspokenness of a very decided character, a gift for 
clarity in expression, a natural balance, an aversion 
for obscurity and exaggeration. As he reviews these 

298 



Literature Traditional Again 299 

characteristics, there are others which he resolutely 
discards: depth, the working everyday variety of com- 
mon sense, the proportion between object and method 
which constitutes practicalness — ^above all, the inclina- 
tion towards a richer if less definite apprehension of 
spiritual realities which in one of its aspects is religion 
and in the other, poetry. Of course it will be found that 
this view of the French nature not only does not apply 
to every representative French individual, but even 
does not cover every period in the history of French 
thought; I feel convinced that the idea of the French 
temperament almost universal in England has been 
abstracted mostly during the two periods in which 
Englishmen seem to have derived most pleasure from 
living in Paris, viz., the eighteenth century and the 
most brilliant years of the Second Empire — the time 
of Chesterfield and Walpole, and that of Sir Pdchard 
Wallace. 

Now what Walpole appreciated in the countrymen 
of Voltaire was not by any means that in them which 
was paving the way for the Revolution, but rather the 
reverse; what the brilliant English colony in the Paris 
of i860 loved was not the sober philosophy of Taine, 
no matter how English in its parentage, but the frothy 
spirit rife on the boulevards, and this evidently was 
rather a restricted view. Pascal, Racine, Bossuet, the 
great French scientists, the great French inventors, 
can no more be left out of an estimate of the French 
genius than Shelley can be ignored by a Frenchman 
trying to see how far poeticalness is associated with the 
matter-of-fact genius of England. Yet the notion 
which we form to ourselves of a people foreign to us is, 
as a rule, the product of the consciousness and pride of 
that people itself rather than an abstraction of our 



300 The Return of the Light 

mind. Tlic J<'r(jiK:liiii;iii pleases the Englishman when 
he ascribes sound common sense to him, and he in his 
turn feels that the EngHshman is right in thinking of 
the French as mostly a clear-headed nation with more 
logic than imagination. It is with these notions as a 
background that, comparing the nineteenth century 
witli the beginning of the twentieth, we can pronounce 
the latter to be, on the whole, more obviously French 
than the former. 

The nineteenth century can be described as the age 
of Romanticism and Naturalism, and ntnther the 
Rt)ni;i,nti(ists nor the Naturalists seem unmistakably 
French. Victor Hugo and his contemporaries offer a 
new type in the history of French literature. Not that 
in many parts of their productions they do not voice 
feelings deeply seated in the national soul, and per- 
ceptible, say, in the poems of Villon or in the mediaeval 
epics, but their literary ethos is a novelty. The 
national characteristics before th(.;m had been summed 
up in La Fontaine's couplet : 

No forgons point notre talent, 
Nous nc fcrions rien avec grace. 

There were ease and balance in the French writers 
of every degree, from Bossuet down. Nobody seemed 
anxious not only to appear, but even to make himself, 
more gifted than he naturally was; there was in litera- 
ture a sort of hierarchy — based on admiration for 
(jthers, to he sure, but also on self-respect — which was 
not its least charm. 

Now when we read George Sand, Michelet, Balzac — • 
that is to say, the great Romanticists — and especially 
the greatest of all, Victor Hugo, we are everlastingly 



Literature Traditional Again 301 

conscious of a contradiction. Here is wonderful facility 
and versatility, an immense production which ought to 
suggest enjoyment quite as much as labour, and yet we 
cannot get rid of an uncomfortable impression that 
under this activity there was an effort. Not one line of 
Voltaire or Diderot ever produces this effect, and 
almost every line of Victor Hugo does. Giants as he 
and his compeers were, they all look like Sisyphus. All 
their lives they tried to be more than they were, to 
achieve more than they could do. They were all of 
them hypnotized by a notion, which they had made 
for themselves, of what genius is. Instead of seeing 
genius as a possibility and a more or less frequent 
realization, they would imagine it as a permanent 
mental condition — in their own language, they per- 
suaded themselves that Dante or Shakespeare was as 
continuously Dante or Shakespeare as an Alp, a Pyra- 
mid, or a Cathedral is what it is, and they strove to 
live up to their imagination. Hence their frown and 
the anxiety they sometimes conceal, sometimes com- 
placently display; hence their haunting idea of an 
unheard-of creativeness, the longing after an expression 
which may be at the same time lyrical, epic, and 
philosophical, the straining after the sublime, or at all 
events the startling, in every word they write. In one 
short phrase from the classic vocabulary they so much 
despised, they are inflated — that is to say, exaggerated 
and discontented, and they are failures. Even the six- 
teenth century authors, bombastic as they often are, 
and frequently inferior to their ideal as the lack of a 
fixed standard must have inevitably made them, seem 
happier; and as to the writers of the two classic ages, 
they invariably strike by the successful appearance of 
their mental lives. The notion of suffering as the 



302 The Return of the Light 

inseparable companion of literary work owes its origin 
entirely to the Romanticists. 

Failures also are the Naturalists, even the most 
famous of them; Flaubert, and — a long way behind 
him — ^the Goncourts and Zola. They not only suffer 
from the inordinate ambition bequeathed to them by 
their predecessors, but from the constraint of a formula 
in which they deliberately shut themselves up. Flau- 
bert, whose natural bent was poetic and lyrical, spent 
his whole life in compressing his gifts and trying to make 
his splendid imagination the handmaid of what he 
insisted on calling the real. He had revelled in the 
composition of La Tentation de Saint Antoine, the first 
version of which must have been written in pure 
delight ; but Madame Bovary was a work of labour and 
patience, and U Education Sentimentale is as depressing 
for the reader as it must have been for Flaubert himself. 
Naturalists excluded everything that did not fall under 
the category of the real, and poor Flaubert, who had a 
strong, if not very noble wing, had to clip it, keep his 
eyes steadily fixed on a few square feet of a very prosaic 
world, and peck at almost invisible little facts instead 
of flying freely. However, his failure is less one of 
achievement than one of method. UEducation Senti- 
mentale, although painful reading, is true art all the 
same, and might have been written in artistic enjoy- 
ment. The mistake of Flaubert was ambition in 
the wrong direction, an exaggeration of modesty, the 
suicide of a man passionately in love with life. 

Very different the error of Zola; it recalls that of the 
Romanticists. The author of the Rougon-Macgiiart 
certainly was a born realist, a collector of small facts, 
with a sense of their individuality. If he had had no 
higher ambition than that of being an accurate painter 



Literature Traditional Again 303 

of low life, one might have a certain contempt for his 
nature, but not for his artistic vision; he would be a sort 
of Restif de la Bretonne. But Zola had as much ambi- 
tion as Hugo. The latter wanted to be a sublime seer; 
Zola would be the social philosopher, condescending to 
translate his philosophy into images as true as life itself, 
and more easily intelligible. He honestly believed that 
his thirty volumes, each one of which was more arti- 
ficially conceived than its predecessor, were a faithful 
picture of life, a document for statesmen and moralists 
to build upon. The illusion at all times would have 
been strange — no sane man can imagine that fiction is 
the truth, and it took the literary gullibility of the nine- 
teenth century to suffer mere novelists to place them- 
selves on the pedestals from which they looked down 
upon their betters — ^but in Zola it was ludicrous. The 
philosophy he pretended to embody was the wire and 
pasteboard doctrine known as Determinism; Zola felt 
sure he could build the history of the Rougon family as 
infallibly as Taine thought he could deduce the philo- 
sophy of English literature from a cold and foggy climate, 
and it was in all seriousness that he regarded himself 
as such a reader of the modern soul that his counsel 
ought to be sought on all hands ; he felt his responsibility 
with irresistible comicalness. 

The same can be said of all his school, and it is 
chiefly on that account that we are inclined to look upon 
their ethos, as well as that of the Romanticists, as for- 
eign to the national temperament. It is not because 
they are low and immoral that we can with difficulty 
think of them as legitimate products of the ancestral 
soil, but because they are glum, gruff, and dictatorial, 
short-sighted and maniacal, and because, when we 
complain of their inferior morality, they can only offer 



304 The Return of the Light 

us, in order to redeem it, the seriousness of the moralist 
instead of the smile of the ironist. 

On the whole, the good-natured, unassuming and 
comrade-like French disposition was offended by the 
Romanticists aiming higher than anybody has a right 
to, and by the Naturalists calling their impassivity a 
scientific attitude, and their taste for the filthy a devo- 
tion to the truth. Besides something debasing, the 
French felt there was something hypocritical in the 
Realist School. 

When, towards 1890, dawned the transformation 
which Brunetiere very aptly called the Renascence of 
Idealism, France was ready for the change. The public 
had had enough physiology, and wanted to hear about 
souls; they were tired of harshness and craved tender- 
ness and pity; tired also of the depressing and the 
coarse, they longed for elegance and cheerfulness. This 
satiety caused the tremendous success of Bourget, who 
was refined and a psychologist ; of Anatole France, who, 
beside Zola, looked like an eighteenth-century engrav- 
ing after a public-house daub; of Loti, whose every 
feature was a novelty; of Barres, too, who in his early 
manner seemed positively to flit along the earth where 
so many were still crawling. Distinction, wit, humour 
were delightfully refreshing, and the roused native taste 
of the French welcomed them as long-lost, prodigal 
sons coming home at last, sick of too coarse a world. 

Was it or not an untoward circumstance that along 
with this return to the traditional ideal came the ac- 
quaintance with foreign literature, which we owed above 
all to Melchior de Vogiie? Certain it is that the move- 
ment, which in its origin — the criticism of Brunetiere 
and the inclination of Anatole France and Bourget — had 
been distinctly French, soon became Russian and 



Literature Traditional Again 305 

Scandinavian. It was in vain that Jules Lemaitre 
pointed out in one of his subtle articles that if we 
wanted pity and tenderness, the apology of love and the 
canonization of suffering, we need not look for them 
further than the novels of Victor Hugo, George Sand, 
and the Goncourts, or the dramas of Alexandre Dumas ; 
the public would not hear, and during a decade French 
thought and French feeling, which had just found them- 
selves, were deeply tinged with the powerful emotion of 
Tolstoi and Dostoievsky, and the inferior but irresisti- 
bly magnified influence of Ibsen and Bjornson. 

The love of the humble, the sympathy with the 
stiffering, the passion for justice which ran so deep in 
Tolstoi's broad current, certainly were needed after the 
heartless Scientism of the writers on the wane; but 
what was not needed was the predominance of feeling 
over reason which suddenly filled French literature as 
it had filled it before the Revolutions of 1789 and 1848, 
the unresisting abandonment to foreign ideals, and the 
humanitarianism which was so soon to transform the 
Dreyfus Affair from a judicial case into a civic war. 

At the close of the nineteenth century the battle of 
the national tradition against its restriction to Natural- 
ism had been won, it is true, but apart from a few imi- 
tators of Anatole France and Bourget, French writers, 
as a rule, would have been at a loss to prove that their 
literary ideal was more French than foreign, and the 
atmosphere of their productions, like the Romanticist 
atmosphere, once more possessed a noble but vague 
quality, an excitement both fascinating and baffling 
which disconcerted the native taste for self-control in 
the expression of sentiment as well as of ideas. 

On the whole, then, we are warranted in saying that 
the nineteenth century may be a fortunate reaction 



3o6 The Return of the Light 

against the pallid classicism of the latter part of the 
eighteenth, and a return to sources of inspiration which 
had been eminently French until the Renaissance, but 
both this reaction and this return were accompanied 
with excitement and fever, exaggeration and violence, 
and they were often helped on or out of their way by 
foreign influences, which give them an uncouth appear- 
ance. Bombast, obscurity, a one-sided view of art 
placing the sublime in the exaltation of the low, a 
research after originality which was to end in the 
elaborate complications of the Decadents, have no 
right to call themselves French. 

It is beside this description of the French way of 
thinking during eight or nine decades that we will at 
present place our attempt at an inventory of contem- 
porary characteristics in literature, leaving it to the 
reader to find for himself how great is the contrast. 

The germs of a fresh growth of the national taste 
which I have pointed out above in the success of 
Bourget and Anatole France, Loti and Barres, also in 
the return of Moreas to a purely classical form, and in 
the curious partiality of a Verlaine — a modern Villon — 
for the eighteenth century, its fetes galantes, its mar- 
quises, its peculiar emotiveness hidden under polish, its 
graceful bravery and its Hmpid expression, all this unex- 
pected craving for the traditional charm was, strange to 
say, accompanied once more by a foreign element. Wag- 
ner, the prophet of heroism, commented upon by 
Nietzsche, the admirer of brute force and the revealer of 
Napoleon, had his day of popularity, but it was to teach 
the French that the only way of being great is to be 
one's self. From that day the French mind and spirit 
have tended with all their energies to be resolutely, 
nay, exclusively French, and the change is visible in 



Literature Traditional Again 307 

every department of literature ; it can be pointed out in 
poetry and in the novel as well as in criticism. 

It is difficult to mention French poetry to English 
readers without calling forth the somewhat contemp- 
tuous smile of Charlotte Bronte. The French language 
is not poetic, they think, nor is the French mind. Both 
are too clear and clear-cut ; place Racine beside Shake- 
speare or Musset beside Shelley ; French poetry is only 
an eloquent cadence. 

I am not going to discuss these strictures. It is a 
fact that the French mind uses prose as its readier 
instrument, and it is also a fact that, at this present 
moment, when the French spirit reasserts itself, poetry 
is far in the background compared to what it was at the 
beginning of Romanticism, when Hugo, Lamartine, 
Musset, and Vigny occupied the front part of the stage. 
There are more poets than there were at any period of 
French hterature, and their average work is superior to 
what it was in the nineteenth century ; but poetry is not 
popular, and the best-known poets, the most successful 
— say, Henri de Regnier and the Comtesse de Noailles 
— do not reach the twentieth part of Victor Hugo's 
public. 

The reason is not because the French are less capable 
than they were of appreciating poetry, but because 
poetry has suffered in popular estimation from its too 
obvious faults of twenty years ago. Who was the great 
French poet towards 1890? Mallarme, no doubt. And 
what was Mallarme? Worse than an Alexandrian, for 
his pleasure in writing poetry was not the Alexandrian's 
pleasure in mere words, but the Cubist's perversion in 
using a medium for a purpose not its own. Mallarme's 
object was so to use words and images that twenty 
readers of the same poem might be placed by it in 



3o8 The Return of the Light 

twenty different states of mind, and no such over-refine- 
ment will ever be popular. I have not the least doubt 
but that if Francis Jammes or Madame de Noailles, 
especially such a true poet as Charles Guerin, had 
appeared immediately after the Parnassians, before 
Mallarme had run away from Parnassian harshness to 
the other extreme of disintegration, they would be even 
more popular than Sully- Prudhomme was in his last 
years. Poetry has never been the national mainspring 
in France — ideas and eloquence play that part — the 
French have had no Homer, or Dante, or Shakespeare, 
or Goethe — but it would be absurd to say that they do 
not love poetry, seeing that when they cannot get it at 
home they go all over the world to find it. Only they 
want it to be as intelligible as prose, if it is in a different 
way; hence their partiality for Villon, Racine, and 
Musset; hence, conversely, their shyness of the 
Decadents. 

Now it is certain that the contemporary school of 
poetry is reassuring. We may safely say that its 
principal names are Madame de Noailles, Francis 
Jammes, Viele-Griffin, Henri de R6gnier, Paul Fort, 
Claudel, and Verhaeren, to whom we feel almost con- 
strained to add Charles Guerin and Angellier, both 
recently dead and better knov^Ti after their death than 
they had been in life. All these poets are clear, except 
Claudel, whose occasional obscurity gives him an almost 
farcical appearance entirely irreconcilable with the su- 
perior parts of his productions. It is not always easy to 
disengage the pagan philosophy of Madame de Noailles 
from its expression; hers is a childish little soul with 
great flashes of joy or sadness springing unexpectedly 
from the childishness, and the contrast is perplexing; 
but you find your way in and out of her meaning as 



Literature Traditional Again 309 

easily as in and out of the French gardens she so fondly 
describes. Henri de Regnier and Viele-GrifEn started 
with the technical singularities in vogue twenty-five 
or thirty years ago, but they gradually gave up this 
Decadent legacy, and their most popiilar poems demand 
no effort or commentary. Francis Jammes's trans- 
parent purity naturally excludes complication, and if 
Verhaeren is apt to appear tumultuous and misty, it is 
after the manner of the torrent; the least attention 
shows order where there is only too much matter. Paul 
Fort often recalls La Fontaine. As to Guerin and 
Angellier, the sensitiveness of the former and the wealth 
of imagery of the latter are united to a precision of 
expression which almost requires some training not to 
appear cloying. 

The same may be said of the rising generation of 
poets. There may not be much poetry of the truly 
heart-felt and heart-nourishing order in the verses of 
Jules Bois, H. Barbusse, Bocquet, Rivoire, Pottecher, 
Bonnard, Porche, Caillard, even in those of Lucie 
Mardrus and Helene Picard — two women of virile 
intelligence — or in those of the Catholic poets, Mauriac, 
Vallery-Radot, and especially Mercier — an amazing 
handler of words and a sincere believer — but there is 
nothing that will discourage the long-scared reader, 
there is none of the carelessness which gave an occasion- 
ally amateurish appearance, even to Lamartine and 
Musset, even to Hugo, and there is frequently the 
rarity of touch, the sudden gleam over an everyday 
word which delighted the first readers of Tennyson. 

What are we to conclude? That after the Parnassian 
glacier and the Decadent jungle, French poetry is 
coming to a more open space, where the sun and the 
breeze of real inspiration may rise any day, and if 



310 The Return of the Light 

Claudel or Madame de Noailles cannot be called 
national poets, they possibly are the forerunners of one 
who will be truly French. The medi£eval emotion of 
Claudel certainly is French, and so is the medium which 
he might borrow from Jammes, or Madame de Noailles; 
why should not the combination of such an inspiration 
with a form as clear as that of the seventeenth century, 
and more poetical, mean greatness, and greatness of a 
decidedly national character? 

I said above that owing largely to the unintelligibility 
of the Decadents, the French are less devoted readers 
of poetry than they used to be. But there is another 
reason for this comparative desertion. At the begin- 
ning of the nineteenth century, when Hugo, Lamartine, 
Musset, and Vigny, all poets, were the protagonists of 
the literary world, the purely material conditions of 
literature were very different from what they are to-day. 
There were yet but few papers, and even magazines; 
literature was expensive, though not very well paid, 
and as a consequence poetry stood a better chance than 
it does nowadays, when high and low are simply be- 
seiged with newspapers, reviews, and volumes of all 
kinds. The literary grandee since the development of 
the Press after 1830, and the invention of the feuilletorif 
has been the novel, and whether we like it or not, if we 
want to ascertain the tendencies of a time or country, 
it is in the novel that we must look for them. It is 
remarkable that this kind of literature attracts authors 
quite as much as readers, thanks to a fallacy which one 
minute's examination is enough to dispel, but which 
most people will not see. The novel combines two 
powerful attractions : it is easy — considering the multi- 
tude of its adepts — and yet it is great — considering that 
the fame of Balzac, Dickens, Tolstoi, and George Eliot 



Literature Traditional Again 311 

is built upon it. The consequence is that the many 
modern activities which are attracted to Hterature 
because it is a handy manner of gaining distinction 
mostly devote themselves to it. The ineradicable hope 
which lives in every literary mind of some day, through 
luck or patience, producing a masterpiece, deceives 
them; no man so much as the novelist flatters himself 
to attain the maximum of effect with the minimum of 
effort, and the tangible result is a daily increasing flood 
of fiction. 

Is it possible to bring order and light into this chaos 
of names and books ? Can criticism see its way through 
such a confusion? Many who have engaged in this task ^ 
seem to have given it up in disgust. The idea now pre- 
valent among critics is that we are too near this over- 
whelming production, and that it will take years to 
distinguish its really important features. Attempts at 
clarifying are discouraged by a circumstance which is a 
novel trait in modern literature, and makes discrimina- 
tion more difficult. Nothing was so striking in the 
literary history of the nineteenth century as the inclina- 
tion of writers to be their own interpreters. From 
Victor Hugo to M. Saint Georges de Bouhelier, from 
Romanticism in its cradle to Naturism, no sooner had a 
young man an idea which seemed of any promise, than, 
instead of testing it through production, he began to 
theorize about it in the tone of a consummate artist 
who, with forty volumes behind him, could draw on 
his experience and build solidly upon it. This was 
sometimes daring, sometimes — much oftener — comical, 
but the results made for clarity. All these disquisitions, 

^Vid. Muller et Picard: Les Tendances Presentes de la Nouvelle 
Litter ature. Paris, Basset, 191 3. Henriot: A quoi Revent les Jeunes 
Gens? Paris, Champion, 1913. 



312 Tlic l\((iirn of ihc I JL^Iil 

icvcl.ilion;;, ;iii(| m;uiirc;;t()c;;, I rc( |ii(iil,ly ;i,('('(>in|);iiiif(l 
wil.li ;i,f<'l.i.iii,i ti(»ii;;, ( l('iiiiiici;i,l,i<>ii;;, .'Mid (•xcctiiiiiiiiiii- 
(Vil.ioii;;, .iliiio;;!, iiiiiiicdi.i Icly ciysL'i.lli/cd in Inniuil.i; 
wliicli .ill r.id.cd a,l,U'iil,i()ii ;md ('V('iil,ii;i,l.('d in I, lie loiina- 
l.ion <>r schools. Tlii;; self ;iii.'dy;;is .'iiid cl.'i.firicn.lion, of 
course, in.'i.dc IIk- l)ii;,inc;;;; of llic Iilcr;uy lii:;lori;i,n much 
(i.'i,si('r tli.'ui il, would li.ivc \}vv.\\ willioiil. Ilxni. 

To-d.'iy l.licnc condilions li.'ivc (•li;i.nj:^('.d. 'I'lic yvv]\:iv- 
ion;; in:;l,incl. Ii;i;; dciu'ilcd lil.('i-;i,ry men, ;ind iJicy liv<; 
(ip.irl.. I;; it Itccjuisc llicy li.ivc i.ccn llic folly ol ("xpccl.- 
\uy, inspir.'i.! ion iKnn rcciiu'S, or l)cc;ui:;c llicy li;i,V(* a 
l.cndciicy l.o d(';.pi:.c .ill nolii'nii;ini;;iii ;i,iid would hliish 
l.o inccl. ;i,l tJic (dfrs of old, or r.iniply hccuisc lilcr.'uy 
jci.loiisy li.-i.;; been irrit,a,l.('(I by vi'iy |)i",'Lclii';d con.'/ukM'ji- 
tions .'irif;in)'; from llic .'i(lv;inl.;i);;('S .'i,l,f;i('lu'<l l,o ;i, literary 
('oniu'clion willi ;i diiily or weekly p;i,per? ('erl.ain it is 
Mi.ii, ;i,p;ul. from ;i few he.iiil.il ill Iriendsliips, litcriiry 
men iiow;i,d;i,y;; .ivoiil one .uiollier ;is e;i.refiilly as ivcws- 
p;i|)er correspondents .-ire ;i,pt to do, .'ind wlieiuwer tlicy 
hit npon ;m " idea" seem ;i,s .-inxion;; to l<e»'p it to them- 
selves ;i,s their predci'esr.ois were to erow over it .ind 
m;ik(> it ol)( lusively public. 

The ('onsecineiic*" is lli.it most <\ss;i,ys in eontempo- 
r;i.rv liter.itnre limit I hemscK'es l-o )Mi;i,rded st.'itements 
extracted from .iiithors .'md rcconi-iled morc^ or less 
s.•lti^;fa.ctorily with their books. Synthesis is hardly 
I'ver .'d. tempted. \r[. Ili(> idc;i. of the modcMii litera,ry 
isok'ition, like mo;;t i^onxM'al idc;i,s, is oiu> which becomes 
loss disconr.'ijMU)', tipon cx;imin;ition. The };i'C);a,rious 
instini't is for the time beinj; in ;ibc\';incc. it is true, but 
the e\'en stroil^tM' inslincl of imibilion .it its loot is not, 
and wc can still, without too much dinicully, sci' it at 
vvtu'k in th(> 1ibM;ir>' woild. Th.it tluMi> arc (.(MkIcmumcs is 
cU'ar, and plajM.iiis.m makes IIumu a;; visible* as tlu' );lai"- 



Literature Traflitfon.il Ay.Cii) 313 



inj^ 1,if:kr-,t,;; ol oM ir;f.'l lo. In f:i<:\,, li,'i/l v/'; only \.\i<' 
l,il,l'/, <>! ni'i'l'-.in ii'>7';l', lioni v/lii'li lo conj'-.f.liu': iJi'ir 
.'idiniUf.:, w<-. 'onl'l 'lo it,; hi nolJiin;'^ <\<i<:, wiwiuXloii 
}>f;l,r.'i,y il;;(;lf •,'< nni' Ii ;i,'. in 1,1)'; ' \\<)\<(: <A :i liUc, .'trrd 
t.'i,I';nt, i1/,'-.ll l)';f jn'.ntjy l;i,ll', int,f> Ijii', pi1,. 

C ';i,ic,f III ol>','-,i v;i.l,ion of 1,1;'-. Iit.c.iru / f]<:l'l 'liov/'; bf;y<')r)d 
a doiihl, l,li;i,t, 1,w> I'Ji'lc.nric;, li.-i.v. lor -.onj'-, t.iiri'; l;';<;ri 
,'1,1, woii-:;on'-, wliirli v/c l(-,'-,l ininic.'li.'i.lcly (,(>)):, t,i;i,inc/| 1,(> 
C'l.ll M;i,li',l,i' , :u\<\ ;i,n'>1,l]c,r for v/liich W© arc, on 1,Iio 
roni, r.'uy, .'i.l, ;i, lo',', t,o fiii'I ;i. n;i,ni':, but whic.li •/< nr, 
obviously t,o \,;iM<- no ]j|(;.-i,:,ui(; in 1,oo <•.](>:.(; a roi;r<jfln':l,ion 
of the rcab 

Mofl<:ni KcrJi'jn i', y/'.II rf.i)r':',':n1,f:fl in a lil,(;r.'j.ry 
}>()(]y wlii'Ii w.'i,;. ',i.\, iir.l, i<-.!'_;u'l''l v/iUi '.okk; 'li',1,rn',l,, 
bul/ upon y/I)ir,h duralion Ii.-i,', f.onl'.i i':'! ,'i.n1,l)ori1,y, viz., 
the r,r,iir(jint Ac'ulciny, 'I'lii', A':,'i.'i'-.niy, f on',i',1,in;^ 
r>rily ol 1,<-,n ni'-nibcr:;, w.'i.', fonn'I'-.'l by Ivhnoii'l (Ic <'ioii- 
coiu'l,, not in imitation, but in ovi'l'-,nt liv-'Jiy of tlio 
I<'i<:n'b A';;i.fl<;rriy. 'I'lio ];i,1,tc,i-, Ii,'i,vin;^ tliionj'jionl, its 
(■.■/.\'.\.< .)]<<■ :t:: .' )< \:i.\.<:(] niot.'i.I '//itli litci.'u y ':;i,non', Vv'itli, 
tlio ic'Jill, ol l':;i,7in;'_ out Mi'Ii nif.n u.'.: Molif.rc, I'.'i.lzac, 
,'Ui'I I' l.'i.iib'-.i I., 'Ii:,' oiit;i,;Mn!', I ).'i,iif let .'Ui'l op'-.nly 'l':';j)if;~ 
in;^ Z'il.'i, :,*;'-,rn':'I to IC. do (ion'onit iinv/'>i1,li7 of 
i<;pi(;:,'-,ntin;^ tlio jjui'; .'uti.ti': Icolin;^, ,'ui'i ■.<> lie tn;i.'l'; 
hi', ov/n (onri'l.'ition on ,'i,b',oliit':ly 'lifff^ront liii';:,. 'Ili'; 
]Mc.:,';iit in' ml)' I'.'jf tlii', A'-'i,f Iciny , IVl M . ^ icfdoy, RoMiy, 
i'>'*iii ;''■,■., I i'-.nni'jii'-,, M irbc'i.n, N'// ;i//<:',, b''')n I );ui']*;1,, 
P;i.iil M.'u jMicritto, ;i.iHi M.'ul.'uri'- b''''*'' ^ '<'Uitic,r, cor- 
t;),in]y li.'i,v(; very little in rornin'Hi v/itli the Freneh 
A' :,'!,' Icrny; tlio soriietliiii!' (oi'';liil but boi'leiiu!^ on tlio 
violf.nt wliieli distinjuiisljc,', ;i.lino,1, :>.]] of tl)';ni v/oiilrl 
be flo'ii'Ie'lly obj':':1,i'>n;i,bl'; ;i,1, tli': b;i,l;i.i', M;i,/„'i,riri. 
Yc,;i.r ;i,l1,'-,r y'-.;!,!' tli'; f <oii''>iir1, Af;i,'l':M)i' i;i,ii', ','',in in 
their clioi'c of the book:, to v/hi' Ii tli'-.y :i.w:u(\ their 



314 The Return of the Light 

prizes to have in view mainly some amends to a young 
writer for being unjustly and narrow-mindedly over- 
looked by the official judges in the French Academy. 
This attitude is so marked, that even an ordinary 
reader would begin to see his way through the multi- 
tude of modern novels merely by putting apart such as 
he feels would be agreeable to the Goncourt Academy 
and suspicious to the other. 

Now, how should we characterize this realism of the 
Goncourt Academicians and of the writers they patron- 
ize? It is as different from the realism embodied in 
Zola as Zola himself was different from the Goncourt 
brothers. It is true that La Fille Elisa paved the way 
for VAssommoir, but La Fille Elisa was written by 
Edmond de Goncourt after the death of his brother, and 
the real Goncourt taste was certainly not for the gratui- 
tously low and horrible. These writers were artists; 
they were so with so much resolution that the reader is 
conscious of an effort where they wanted only to apply 
a method, but the effort is in the opposite direction to 
that followed by Zola. Where Zola wanted the dreary 
fatalism of what he called life to reign supreme, the 
Goncourts would seek another element; they selected 
and arranged, and their pleasure lay as much in the 
treatment as in the accuracy of their matter. With 
more taste than power, and yet an inclination towards 
a kind of novel which required power before everything, 
it was impossible that they should ever rise to the first 
rank, but it is no less true that their notion of realism — • 
nature artistically dealt with — has been realized in the 
best fiction, from the Odyssey to Les Pay sans or Middle- 
march. 

It is in this same spirit that we see practically all 
contemporary realists approach their subjects. Leav- 



Literature Traditional Again 315 

ing aside a few older writers, like Mirbeau, Descaves, 
or Hennique, who never could tell robustness from 
brutality, they see that the inherent faults of realism, 
viz., lack of mellowness or atmosphere, aloofness and 
harshness, are indeed faults and not distinctions, and 
they try to remedy or conceal them. 

Most of them believe, like the Goncourts, in the 
redeeming virtue of style; they are artists. The only 
difference between men like the Rosny brothers, P. 
Margueritte, and — ^in spite of his exaggerations — Paul 
Adam, or — among the younger generation — writers 
like J. A. Nau, Mme. Colette, Binet-Valmer, Savignon, 
Elder, Werth, Hamp, Roupnel, Pergaud, and the ultra- 
refined imitators of the classics, of whom we shall speak 
by and by, is merely that they seek a higher relief 
than the others and are more attracted by popular 
naturalness or intensity. 

Beside these we find others as incapable as them- 
selves of painting otherwise than from life, but whose 
natural bent is to tinge the picture with their own 
mental colouring. Some of them, undoubtedly under 
the influence of Dostoievsky, are positively soaked 
in sadness and tenderness. Geffroy, the author of 
V Apprentie, Frapie, the author of La Maternelle, above 
all Ch. M. Philippe — recently dead, but a daily grow- 
ing influence — and his obvious imitators, Hirsch, 
Moselly, Ch. M. Garnier, and Marguerite Audoux, 
are all painters of the humble life, but they select it for 
its inherent pathos, which reveals an abyss between 
them and the soulless author of L'Assommoir, who 
selected it for its crudities. 

Finally, another school seems also to crave some- 
thing richer than nude reality, but its tendency is 
not sentimental. L. Bertrand, the Leblond brothers, 



3i6 The Return o\' the Light 

d'KsparlxV, llio soainnti writcM- ("'laudo l^^arrc^ro, Mont- 
fcu"t, oftiMi also r. Ailam and ihc hvoihcva Rosny, 
loratc' (Iirif storii's in sunipliious sunouiidin^s, Iro- 
qiKMidy inulor j^Knvtni; i\>K>MiaI Iu\ivimis, and with a 
gcnoral \vt\d(h o\' hai-kyMomul throwiiii; its rofliH-tion 
oviM" tin' i'\rfyda\' di^tails. This iui"tln>d iMu-r inoro 
brinies us nmrh iioariM' Suhunniho than La Tcnc, and 
oxidontly ii;ni>rcs tlu^ canons of Naturalism. 

On the whole, it appears ovidiMit that tho i;looiny 
workslu^p, or, it' you pnM'er anotluM' siiniK\ the smxlid 
liospital room noxt di>or to a oharnol-houso, in which 
the seluH^l of /A>la induli;es its sombre mania, has been 
deserted, and that the taste for tlu^ real, without which 
the wiMks o{ Molii^re, Lesage. and I'Abbe Pre\ost would 
not. exist, is once more associati\l in i'^rench litiMaturo 
with art, its indispensable i;ui(k\ 

This, attci- all, is merely the ciMulitiiMi of literary 
l)eauty in an>- language ov coimtry, an».i might, only 
mean that thi^ l*'rench have lecovercti from the strange 
exaggeration into which the sickening formality of 
classicism in its ilecay had thrown tluMu; but it is only 
one aspect of the contemporary production, and there is 
ani>thcr of far greater signiticance. 

The literature o{ the nineteenth century, as already 
said, almost invariably gives us the impression of an 
etTort. The Romanticists as well as the Realists and 
the Naturalists always seemed tt> show otT — they com- 
pelled us ti> admire their muscles. Their redundance 
is nothing else than the complacent reivtition of the 
cunateur dumb-bell performer, and it is not surpris- 
ing that it gave so much offence in the few eighteenth- 
century drawing-rooms which were ix\>pened after the 
Revolution. It jarred as barbarous, ungvntlematily, 
and foivign. After neoi-ly a hundred yeai"s it is the 



Literati J n: Traditional Arciin 317 

■.::i.if><-- r':;)/;tion •//<: 7/iiri<-//, in at ]<::>:.l iifl'-j-.n out of tv/r;rj1,y 
literary ])(■/)]>]<■., 'i.rvj orj^ r'-Jnarr: v/ith difficulty from 
];i},<:]]]r\'/_ the '/.liool-. I h;),ve ju.t revievA/J a'; "less 
I'l'-.tj'.!), " in tlj': •/;))'/; v/Iji'Ji I endeavour'/J to define 
at the ])(:y\r\ri\r\'.' of thi:; j;af;e-r. 

Wh;j.t the I<orn;j,ntiei',t-, heqij<'>athed to u': eon 'J -.ted 
efiiefly in ,'i,n ,'i,drniration of tlje e/'/-,oi,iori'';,] ; a :,tr;:.i;]:r,;^^ 
aft'-.r oriidnality v/hieh, in the •,;;--;//: of a dee^j.de or tv/o, 
' oin;;]etely tr;..rr,forrried not only the literary eon- 
ee]/:,ion',, hut, v/fjieh i . rriore extraordinary, the l;j,n- 
;'ii:.,;^e it' .elf. Thousand , of ■.uoLhi'.l') imitators of llw/o 
i'()ry/)l tfje medium they had received from Voltaire, 
heeror.e they despi;x;d what th'-.y called its cheajJ 
(:l'.;^■l,n^'•. ,-i.nfl superficial clarity, hut thr;y could not so 
rn ily in v'.rit one capable of taking its ii\ii.Qit. The 
I^Venf;h they wrote was now bombastic, now bordering 
on the a>arseness which Revolutionary lf;vellers had 
imposed with the "^w" and the ^^ citoym' ; \)\ii it was 
hardly eve-r rich. One sinjde j^eneration i;; unequal to 
the lon^^ work of ages in the formation of a language 
combinin;^ ;i.cf:uni.cy with picturesqueness. 1"he semi- 
intern.).tion;d ;i.nd fleshless vocabulary of the Press, just 
then findinj^ f?).vourable conditions, completed the dis- 
.'i.ter. Whereas literature spoke a language of its own, 
fhfl'.rent with each writer, and which was eventually 
to develoij into the wild inventions of the Decadents, 
rnf-re n-.rj.ders learned another, from which the grace 
and t.lie jjith of its predecessor were entirely gone. So 
after the d'eadence of taste we saw the decadence of 
the ]'.a\y}r.\.:/(;, which is the beginning of barbarism, and 
one could have hardly foreseen that a restoration of 
both taste and language was so near. 

Who is responsible for this unexpected turn, it is not 
very difficult to sn,y. Renan, by his classic taste and 



31 8 The Return of the Light 

intellectual honesty, was a link between our writers 
and those who thought more of what they had to say 
than of the manner of saying it; Anatole France wor- 
shipped the French undcfiled of the eighteenth century, 
and many a young man learned it in his books as one 
learns a foreign tongue; Jules Lemaitre, both in his 
style and in his way of judging things, even in his 
charming personality, was a revelation. Here was a 
Frenchman of wide influence, content with the popular 
quahties of his race and disdaining anything that his 
countrymen could not with proper culture attain, and 
yet with this modest ambition it appeared that he not 
only made the most of his gifts, but, compared with others 
of apparently higher flight, was found decidedly supe- 
rior. Once more the art of thinking summed up in 

Ne forsons point notre talent 

showed its long-forgotten efficacy, and the lesson was 
taken to heart. Add that the something vulgar in 
French politics of which everybod}^ became more and 
more conscious and tired, threw the dissatisfied minds 
back to gentler times, and went far to prepare the soil 
for finer literary seeds. 

The characteristic of the generation of literary 
prose writers now between twenty -five and thirty -five 
is certainly, in the phrase of one of its representatives, 
M. Andr6 du Fresnois, that "f//^ a rappris raisance.** 
They have re-learned naturalness, and their gait is 
elastic and free. They never frown and they often 
smile; they are capable of emotion, but they shun senti- 
mentalism, and morbidity is loathsome to them; instead 
of everlastingly talking about truth, they aim at what 
our ancestors modestly called "justness"; you never 



Literature Traditional Again 319 

hear them utter the word "attempt" with the boastful 
humility of the Decadents, to whom anything new 
was a thing admirable, but they are not afraid of think- 
ing of perfection; they are enthusiastic, but when they 
feel so it is for good reasons, which they are ready to 
give you; finally, they have gone back to the days 
when the language was full of idioms and racy phrases 
or images, which certainly were the common property of 
all, but had more charm on the lips of a porter who had 
caught them from his mother than in the books of a 
Romanticist who laboriously re-invented them; their 
French is once more crisp and direct, or graceful, and 
to the immense relief of some of their elders, they spare 
us adjectives. In short, they are very near the com- 
bination of qualities which foreigners were wont to call 
French in the days when this word had the most mean- 
ing; and being French, that is to say themselves, they 
are happy, which is a precious literary asset, far supe- 
rior to the vain hope of becoming some day sublime. 
Trying to number these new writers would be futile ; 
their multitude baffles the most honest desire of keeping 
up with their production, and frequently discourages 
classification. A great many of them are mere imi- 
tators of that greatest of imitators, Anatole France, or 
at best of the writers whom Anatole France imitates. 
Behind Henri de Regnier, Pierre Louys, Marcel Bou- 
lenger, the brothers Tharaud, etc., you could find a host 
of men and women who have had the revelation of 
the remarkable virtue of the pastiche, viz. , to make in- 
spiration possible for people who otherwise would never 
know what it meant. There is no deep originality 
there, to be sure, but there is a simplicity nearly akin to 
sincerity, and there is, above all, the resurrection of the 
language. Were it not for his irony, Anatole France 



320 The Return of the Light 

would only be the top boy in a large class of pupils of 
Voltaire and Montesquieu, and, in better days, would 
not be taken seriously. But seeing that what he gave us 
is exactly what we needed, he is, in one respect at least, 
a genius, and his imitators, if they are only imitators, 
are at all events the makers of an atmosphere in which 
something better than imitation will grow. 

Even now we meet with many works which it would 
be unfair to label as mere imitations, although their 
classical parentage can easily be traced. Of humorists 
like Tristan Bernard, Andre Beaunier and Jean Giraud- 
oux we feel constrained to say that what imitation has 
afforded them was only the possibility to be themselves, 
and that they are really themselves. 

Besides we already find a whole school of novelists, 
the special quality of whom has no prototype ; it is the 
school of refined and poetic writers who do too much 
honour, it seems to me, to Rene Boylesve by speaking 
of him as a chief. All that should be said is that he was 
a forerunner. Here the sharpness of the eighteenth 
century lines is softened by a smiling tenderness which 
in most cases must have come straight from Dickens — 
extensively read in France — or by the poeticalness of 
Fromentin. Marcelle Tinayre, J. des Gachons, A. de 
Chateaubriand, Jaloux, Larbaud, Miomandre, Viollis, 
Lafon, Nesmy, Mauriac, Vallery-Radot, G. de Voisins, 
all suggest the classic conception, but all make us see 
in the background of their stories a bright rainbow 
which the eighteenth century never conjured. 

A similar remark may be made concerning the 
psychologists, A. Gide, the Tharaud brothers, Benda, 
especially Emile Clermont, whom two volumes have 
been enough to render famous. Their novels are ob- 
viously conceived and written in close imitation of what 



Literature Traditional Again 321 

used to be called recits, and betray the haunting pre- 
sence of Adolphe and of the less-known stories which 
Adolphe has thrown into the shade, but there is a quality 
in them which would not be found even in Adolphe, 
What this quality is cannot be easily defined ; it may be 
only the contrast between the high plane which a true 
soul crisis requires and the low physiology of Natural- 
ism, but whatever it may be, it strikes us as an original- 
ity. I must also mention a class of writers less intent 
upon the merely artistic aspect of their work, but who, 
however, help quite as much as the rest in measuring 
the distance between the present generation and that 
which worshipped Zola. After Bourget, Barres, and 
Bazin, men like H. Bordeaux, P. Acker, J. Psichari, 
Variot, and A. Baumann, and — in spite of his splendid 
isolation and different spirit — R. Rolland, are as 
interested in the moral and social lesson of life as in life 
itself, and would be best called Idealists, although the 
wish to be true is alive in them, as in any Realist. 

As a conclusion, let me repeat emphatically that if 
anybody had predicted in 1880 that less than forty 
years later the source of inspiration and the whole tone 
of the French novel would have changed, the prediction 
would have sounded more than improbable. Yet this 
apparent impossibility is to-day sober reality, and has 
for some time ceased to astonish. The battle in which 
Bourget, Loti, Barres, and A. France engaged with Zola 
has been won twenty times over, and no signs show 
that another corruption of the public taste is likely. 

The reader may very naturally ask himself whether 
this fortunate change for the better has been productive 
of exceptional effects, and whether the rising generation 
has any masterpieces to show. The answer must be in 
the negative. Not only have our young writers failed 



322 The Return of the Light 

as yet to produce anything that may be named with 
the classics of the French language, but one hesitates 
to compare them with the authors mentioned above as 
entering the field before them, viz., Bourget, France, 
Loti, and, shortly afterwards, Barres. These young 
men are all distinguished, but you can hardly call any 
of them powerful. Is it because their principles are 
opposed to exaggeration and even insistence, that they 
are afraid of a strong treatment and apt to indulge in 
mere daintiness? Or is it because, thinking the literary 
professionalism of the nineteenth century bad form, 
they are inclined to act as men of the world with an 
aversion to repetition? Or are we, the public, to blame, 
and is it because we have been so long accustomed to 
the enormous effort of men like Hugo, Balzac, and Zola, 
even Bourget and Anatole France, that we cannot 
separate greatness from productivity, and would rather 
tolerate repetition than apparent inaction? I should 
not be surprised if this were largely the truth. We can- 
not remember the days when Bourget and A. France 
having only produced their first works — which proved 
not to have been their worst — we looked upon them 
merely as promising young men, very like the promising 
young men of to-day. Perhaps we only place Romain 
Rolland apart from the rest because he was lucky 
enough to strike a vein or, more accurately, adopt 
a method which enabled him to insist and repeat 
without being taken to task for it. It may be that if 
he had written his ten volumes on ten different subjects 
instead of indefatigably expanding the story of his hero, 
we should complain of his monotony instead of extol- 
ling his power. Certainly the inspiration of the less 
productive novelists does not differ in quality from 
that of Romain Rolland; their common characteristic 



Literature Traditional Again 323 

is naturalness and facility, whether the writers indulge 
in or hold in check their facility. 

It may be also that we are coming to a period in which 
the quantity and comparative excellence of productions 
will result in a highly estimable uniformity similar to 
that which strikes the student of literary history in the 
first two thirds of the eighteenth century; surely this 
would be better from the mere artistic standpoint 
than the ambitious poverty of the second part of the 
nineteenth. 

But whether we are in the presence of mere promises 
or have to be content with what we have been given so 
far, all this is pure speculation, and need not detain us 
any longer. From the positive point of view adopted in 
this volume, it is not so, and we can speak with certi- 
tude. Certainly the defeat of that low offspring of 
Romanticism and Realism — the naturalist novel — and 
the substitution for it of another infinitely more flexible 
in its forms and calling forth some of the most sterling 
French qualities — balance, wit, elegance, psychological 
penetration, and, above all, that incomparable dowry 
of the national genius, clarity — is of capital significance, 
not only for literature, but for the intellectual health of 
the nation at large, and this, as we said at the begin- 
ning of this chapter, is what really matters. 

In fact, what was the reaction of literature on the 
popular consciousness from the Revolutionary to the 
Dreyfus times? A very enervating one. The affecta- 
tion of impossible sentiments by the poets, the high- 
flown theories of second-rate philosophers, the laborious 
obscurity of even everyday prose-writers, were all 
puzzling and bewildering; and the exquisite letters of 
Dupuy and Cotonet in Musset's works are only the 
amusing expression of a very general and very depress- 



324 The Return of the Light 

ing experience. Its immediate consequence was an 
exaggerated respect for scribblers of all kinds, which 
had originated under the Encyclopaedists, but gradually 
increased to the extent of making Hugo's influence 
greater than that of Voltaire or Rousseau. Finally, it 
reversed the scale of values in the minds of all except the 
lucky illiterate, placing art before action, and inducing a 
preference for sentimental experiences of a rare kind, 
crises, as they were called, and things which would look 
well in print, instead of the manly enjoyment of positive 
influence. Emma Bovary, in this respect, is a wide- 
embracing analysis. The nineteenth century will 
appear in French history as a curious lapse in the tradi- 
tional frankness during which a peculiar kind of atti- 
tudinizing prevailed, impelling people to pretend 
understanding, when they did not understand, and 
to demand sympathy for emotions they never could 
feel. 

Quite the reverse is the result of the recent literary 
evolution. The transparency in concept and expres- 
sion which has become an indispensable condition for 
acceptance is so natural to the French that while it 
gives them pleasure it causes them no surprise, and con- 
sequently the enjoyment of literary excellence has 
become once more a calming influence. Conversely we 
see a declared aversion, not unmixed with scorn, to 
unreasoned enthusiasm, that of Michelet as much as 
that of popular Dreyfusism, and an impatience of 
"clouds" of all kinds. The question which was never 
asked during the classical ages, because it never had to 
be asked, nor during the nineteenth century, because 
it would have been asked too often : What do you mean? 
is so universal to-day that it will soon become super- 
fluous. It is remarkable that there is only one critical 



Meaning of M. Bergson's Success 325 

school at the present moment, that of Neo-classics, and 
that clarity is its only canon. 

So literature is gradually resuming its true place, 
which is behind life as a beautiful reflection of life, and 
not in the forefront. The literary colossus of the Hugo, 
Michelet, or Balzac type, who towered above the nine- 
teenth century and intimidated even a man like Taine 
would now be impossible. If his place is to be filled, 
it will be by a new Napoleon and not by a writer. 

I see two main tendencies set free by the literature 
of the last thirty years, one embodied in the psychologi- 
cal concept of Bourget and Barres and the other in the 
irony of Anatole France. The former makes for libera- 
tion, for personal responsibility; the latter stands for 
the superiority of common sense, of French lightness — 
not levity — of wit as the gaiety of intelligence; both 
amount to the predominance of action over books. In 
one word, France is practically cured of the literary 
malady which went far to make her vital reaction more 
difficiilt after 1870 than it would have been a hundred 
and especially two hundred years before ; recovering her 
taste for light, she cannot but recover her health. 

2. The Meaning of M. Bergson's Success 

Is it merely a philosopher's success? Is not, on the 
contrary, this startling vogue another sign of the 
appreciation of clarity and sincerity which is perceptible 
on all hands and rapidly changes the characteristics of 
contemporary literature? I think so. 

Fight your way, if you can, into the ridiculously small 
room in which M. Bergson lectures at the College de 
France, and wait among the expectant crowd until the 
hour comes. Perhaps you know nothing about the 



326 The Return of the Light 

professor, except that he is quite original, constructs 
the world in a manner entirely his own. This rather 
intimidates you; philosophy is naturally overawing, 
and you dread having to make a special effort to under- 
stand this particular system. On the stroke of the 
hour the professor appears. He is a spare little man, 
with nothing remarkable besides his admirably formed 
brow and an exceptionally winsome smile. He has not 
been half a minute in his chair before you feel that the 
audience is in simple and familiar sympathy with him. 
He begins to speak, summing up his previous lecture in 
the old fashion, and announcing his subject for to-day. 
There is no solemnity whatever in his utterance, nothing 
that is not perfectly natural in the wonderfully managed 
voice, so clear that only after a few minutes do you 
notice that it hardly rises above the very lowest key. 
All he says is simple, but as he says it you become 
conscious of a constantly growing interest in the ques- 
tion, as if you had never heard it discussed before. 
From time to time hard and dry facts are adduced 
from some learned work, but so much to the point that 
it seems as if they had been collected to serve the pro- 
fessor's purpose. M. Bergson himself is conscious of it, 
and his charming smile brightens up the thin face. 
Everything he says makes the subject clearer, until it 
appears as elemental as if it were propounded by the 
mind of a child, and philosophy must be the plainest 
answer to very natural questions which nobody has a 
business to complicate. The old saying about the ora- 
tor who turned out to be not an orator but a man sings 
in your ear, and as you hear it you feel compelled to 
substitute another phrase of a more purely French 
character. This man who sees things so directly and 
expresses them in such clear, almost everyday language 



Meaning of M. Bergson's Success 327 

is a modern Descartes converting philosophy from jar- 
gon, indeed; but he also is what the French language 
since the days of Descartes has called, very simply but 
very forcibly, Vhonnete homme, as distinguished from the 
pedant. Then you notice that if the presence of a cer- 
tain number of smartly dressed women in this room is 
objectionable in one respect, it is not so from another 
point of view; M. Bergson speaks in a whitewashed 
lecture-room, but it is not amiss that this room should 
recall a salon. How far we feel from the days — not long 
past, though — when everything, from literature to 
politics, was acceptable only if it paraded under a thick 
mask of technicalities ! 

You leave the College de France after a lecture of 
M. Bergson's as you leave a concert-room after Mozart, 
with the sensation of something sunny which you would 
like to be able to re-create when you would ; and, as you 
cannot always be at the College de France, you buy the 
philosopher's three or four volumes and you begin 
studying them. Are you perfectly satisfied? No. 
The volume on Les Donnees Immediates de la Con- 
science sums up a great deal of purely scientific reading; 
Matiere et Memoire is so compact and full that its 
apparent clarity is elusive; U Evolution Creatrice is a 
poem which you read as you read Dante, wading 
through difficult parts in the hope of coming to enchant- 
ing oases. So philosophy, even with Bergson to intro- 
duce you to it, cannot avoid being philosophical and dry. 
This is a disappointment. Another experience in the 
course of your reading is even more so. As you begin 
to realize what M. Bergson means by intuition, you 
conceive great hopes. This intellectual process, which 
puts us in immediate communication with realities — it 
is not philosophy, it is something more general and 



328 The Return of the Light 

simple — why, everything told, ought it not to be called 
an "art of thinking"? The discovery is elating. M. 
Bergson's philosophy is only a metaphysical novel, as 
likely or unlikely as the others, and you are not unwise 
enough not to notice that it is built from the Evolution- 
ists' note-books. But an "art of thinking" is what we 
all, consciously or unconsciously, are for ever seeking. 
Nothing makes us so happy as the discovery of a truth ; 
it is what we everlastingly hope to chance upon in talking, 
and the idea gives something almost feverish to French 
conversation. And what is, after all, the great charm 
of M. Bergson's lectures? Only that for an hour he 
produces no end of startling truths from his simple 
premises. So the idea that he may give us his secret 
for thinking right and bright is highly exciting. But as 
you re-read and re-think what he says about the intui- 
tive process, one unfortunate intuition gradually dawns 
upon you. This magic process, which looks at first 
sight like a sublime recipe, is, after all, only a descrip- 
tion, and a description of what? — of all things, a descrip- 
tion of genial thinking. What do you gain by being 
told that the only way of thinking right is to think like 
Plato, Kant, or Pasteur, and not only think as they did, 
but think as they did in their most divine moments? 
This, indeed, is disheartening. 

But put the volumes back on your shelves and seek 
once more the whitewashed room at the College de 
France. This time M. Bergson is lecturing on Berkeley 
or Spinoza. He may be tempted by some point in his 
subject to evoke the springing fountain which helps 
his imagination to visualize the effort upwards of life as 
spirit and its dropping down as matter ; and according to 
your individual tendency you will like or dislike the 
invitation the poet-philosopher makes to you of uniting 



Meaning of M. Bergson's Success 329 

almost mystically with the universal flux; but possibly 
you will hear nothing of the kind. M. Bergson will not 
make any attempt at solving the great enigma; per- 
haps he will say nothing that will strike you as deep or 
even novel ; but as he proceeds in his delightful leisurely 
manner to expound Berkeley's or Spinoza's doctrine 
you will be conscious of a wonderful gift for showing 
us a human attitude behind the tendency of a meta- 
physical system, and you will marvel once more at an 
expression so perfectly subdued that it hardly seems 
different from the thought. 

This means that what you admire the most in Berg- 
son is his talent. And do not let the discovery shock 
you. Certainly there are among the young philo- 
sophers who follow M. Bergson some who may be as 
interested as himself in a scientific representation of the 
world, and there are also many among his admirers who 
rejoice at the change from Taine's philosophy to his, at 
the possibilities his criticism of materialism has opened 
for the moralist; but the intellectual attraction which 
the most intelligent section of the public feels for M. 
Bergson is not philosophical. It is not purely literary 
either. It is that higher aspect of the literary tendency 
which really is a moral one and constitutes an ethos 
in itself, viz., perfect sincerity, as opposed to the craze 
which impelled the nineteenth century literary man to 
say anything as long as it looked well in print. That 
M. Bergson is interested in metaphysics appears as a 
minor point ; that he is interested in it as the seventeenth- 
century people were interested in everything — deeply, 
seriously, and without any reference to writing or being 
read — is what really matters. What our contempo- 
raries love the most in M, Bergson is his honesty, and 
the clear-sightedness which is its reward comes after. 



330 The Return of the Light 

This is enough to place the present generation above 
that which admired Renan. Renan wrote with some 
of the quaHties which M. Bergson displays in speaking, 
but he was more envied for writing than for feeling like 
a man of the classical ages. M. Bergson would be 
followed even if he never wrote a line. Here, again, we 
see the deep reaction which differentiates the beginning 
of the twentieth century from the end of the Romantic- 
ist period, and in default of masterpieces is an evidence 
of the return to the ideal which gives birth to master- 
pieces. 

3. The Restoration of Classical Sttidies 

The reform of the haccalaureat initiated by the 
decrees of 1902 was not badly received at first by the 
public. Most people had no suspicion that its spirit 
was political, and it was not easy for them to discrimi- 
nate between that which in the reform was the work of 
professors they respected, and that for which inexperi- 
enced politicians at the Ministry of Education were 
responsible. The novelty of the arrangement attracted 
as it always does, and its apparent broadness reassured. 
Latin and Greek were not sacrificed ; whoever wished to 
have these languages taught to their children had only a 
word to say. Many a father, remembering that he had 
always been poor at the classics and entertaining no 
delusions about the use he made of them, was glad that 
a useless burden was not to be put on his son. Mothers 
rejoiced at the comparative facility of the new ex- 
aminations. Certainly English and German with a 
governess must be easier than Greek with formidable 
dictionaries. During seven or eight years few protests 
were heard about the new methods, and they mostly 



Restoration of Classical Studies 331 

came from writers opposed to the Government and 
who might be actuated by political animosity. Things 
changed towards 1910, after the reform had been given 
its full chance and the results it must produce had 
become visible in young men of from eighteen to twenty- 
one years of age. A strong reaction then set in, and 
remonstrances came the weight of which could not be 
denied. To the unbounded astonishment of the news- 
paper readers, the first that was made public came from 
quarters where it had been little expected. This 
indictment, couched in strong and remarkably well- 
chosen terms, was the work of an engineer, M. Guillain, 
holding no less a situation than the presidency of French 
Forges and Furnaces. This gentleman complained to 
the Ministry of Education about the falling off he 
noticed in young men applying to him. 

It was a serious anxiety for people interested in the future 
of French industry to find so many signs of weakened culture 
in these young engineers. They managed to get passed at 
the entrance examinations for the Ecole Poly technique or the 
Ecole Centrale, but they were not prepared for making 
the most of the teaching which they received there, and 
the results were too visible. 

Another scientist, M. Lechevallier, well known 
among the best mining engineers, substantiated the 
same complaints in an admirable tract which was 
widely circulated, and which the present writer has 
been several times both delighted and surprised to see 
in almost humble homes to which a wise decision about 
the boys' education is of paramount importance. 
Almost simultaneously Raoul Blondel, M.D., declared 
that his experience of medical students led him to 
the same conclusions. They might give proofs of pre- 



332 The Return of the Light 

mature erudition, they hardly ever gave indications of 
originaHty or of that curiosity which only an intelligent 
early training will awake. 

On the whole, good judges who were neither professors 
nor literary people, but who happened to be in a place of 
vantage to see where the reform of 1902 was leading 
to, held it responsible for a weakening of acumen which 
might well be called a crisis of the French culture. 

The phrase promptly became a watchword, and in a 
short time another was frequently associated with it. 
There was not only a crisis of the French culture but a 
crisis of the French language as well, and this time it 
was chiefly noticed by professors in the lycees or by 
examiners for the baccalaureat. The rising generation 
of boys were uncertain about their own language; they 
seldom could account for the words they used or for the 
meaning they attached to them, and they seemed to 
have vague notions about their origins, although a great 
deal of philological zeal was spent on their educa- 
tion. All the professors who thus complained traced the 
lapse to the neglect of Latin as its chief cause. The 
boys trained exclusively in translating from or into 
modern languages and in the reading of French texts 
appeared to be little helped by their translations, and 
certainly got little out of their French reading. The 
latter exercise was too easy to do when superficial, and 
too difficult to force on the boy's attention when more 
thorough, to be of any great use. The persevering com- 
parison between French and its parent language, which 
the old syllabus made of daily use during six or seven 
years, was far more effective than any superimposed 
philology. Nothing else would counteract the influence 
of slovenly spoken French or of the fleshless language 
which the newspaper spreads everywhere. 



Restoration of Classical Studies 333 

The French Academy, the Societe des Gens de LettreSj 
and two leagues — one of which was called Ligue des 
Amis du Latin and the Ligue pour la Culture Classique — 
echoed the professors' alarm, and a few answers to their 
statements even by men hke M. Croiset and M. 
Lanson seemed timid compared to the universal protest. 
There is little doubt that the return to the classical 
models begun by M. Anatole France acted powerfully 
on the public. The elegance of thousands of these 
imitations not only struck the readers, but somehow the 
connection between this style and the traditional grace 
of the best French language could not, they realized it, 
be divorced from the classic French education. In a 
short time the effects of this movement of public 
opinion became apparent. The Government — that is 
to say, the bureaucracy at the Ministry of Education- — 
of course did not show any signs of having met with 
this resistance in the country. The decrees of 1902 were 
not repealed, and the syllabus remained the same. But 
the parents did of their own accord what the state did 
not encourage them to do except in the anonymous 
advice of many headmasters. At the present moment 
9 per cent, more boys take Latin than before the 
reform of 1902, and it becomes shameful once more to 
be foreign to the classical culture. Let a return to the 
more virile methods in the teaching of Greek and Latin, 
of which there are many signs, become more general, 
and some day, it is to be hoped, official, and the intel- 
lectual inheritance of France will be in safety. A classic 
formation on the broad human bases which the Uni- 
versite had laid for it in the early part of the nineteenth 
century is sure to make the French conscious of their 
best characteristics and to replace them in their most 
natural tradition. 



334 The Return of the Light 

Conclusion 

On the whole, the French as a nation seem to be 
recovering from several very dangerous diseases: the 
criticisms of the Revolution by men like Taine and 
Sorel, the revelation of the snares hidden in the Decla- 
ration of the Rights of Man, the sickening abuse of 
beautiful words Hke "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" in 
the service of very sordid interests, the transformation 
by Syndicalism of a problem long considered as in- 
dividual into a system of corporative claims, the sudden 
realization, after Tangier, that a nation is not a col- 
lection of independent individuals, but a society; the 
reintegration of the past into the habitual thoughts of 
the citizens by Barresian Uterature have gradually 
cured the French of the individualistic point of view 
made popular by Rousseau; their tendency, in the 
presence of any political event or of an idea with enough 
in it to make it yeasty, is less to examine how far the 
individual may be affected by it than how far it will 
promote or hinder the public welfare; they have re- 
sumed the habit of viewing European politics in the 
terms of two hundred years ago, saying "the interest of 
France," "the doings of Prussia," as if each Frenchman 
were an ambassador speaking for his whole country, 
and not a humanitarian innocent of frontier ques- 
tions. There are still parties in France, but all except 
one — the Radical-Socialists — are agreed that building 
up the politics of a country on its internal divisions is 
the mistake of men who ought to be municipal coun- 
cillors in their village and not the leaders of a nation. 
Socialism and Syndicalism may be sometimes the cham- 
pions of rights, oftener the supporters of disorder; they 
have ceased to be either bugbears or dazing-mirrors. 



Conclusion 335 

Finally, war itself has lost the power which defeat, 
combined with a poor philosophy and with the increas- 
ing abhorrence of all discomfort, had conferred upon its 
very name. The French, having in 19 10 honestly 
wished for a call to arms which would have been purely 
patriotic, on that day, we may hope, laid for ever the 
ghost of 1870. 

If we reflect that under the Second Empire and later 
— as soon as the Third Republic was well established — 
France was a very hotbed of fallacies sometimes con- 
cealed, sometimes embodied in politics, it will appear 
that few countries have made so much progress in the 
direction of common good sense and patriotic energy 
as this country has in the past ten years, and a glance 
at the regress visible elsewhere will make the advance 
even more striking. 

All this nobody seems to question, and the German 
press itself not only admits but, when it serves its 
interests, exaggerates. What people capable of reflec- 
tion ask themselves, from sympathy or from racial 
opposition, is : Whether this convalescence will result in 
recovery or in a relapse. 

Nations, like individuals, have moods, and if the 
laws of their changes are even more difficult to ascer- 
tain than those of psychology, we know that they must 
exist, and we often feel as if we were near discovering 
them. Intellectual principles are deeply rooted in their 
proper soil, i. e., the minds equal to the effort of nour- 
ishing and not merely receiving them, but impressions 
and impulses are fugitive in the souls of the multitude. 
Will the ideas of the few be strong enough and stay 
bright enough to support and enlighten the impulses 
of the many, or, on the contrary, will not the non- 
chalance of the millions obscure these lights in its lazy 



336 The Return of the Light 

vapour? France has had moods before: in 1876, when 
the Republican spirit swept away the germ of political 
good sense planted by Thiers and by the Due de 
Broglie; in 1889, after the Boulangist agitation; in 1898, 
when what was already called the esprit nouveau blew 
over in a few months, and strainings after reason, 
justice, and courage were seen to come to nought. Are 
there more reasons this time to hope that the soul will 
lift up the body instead of being dragged down by it? 
The threat of a war for which she was unprepared 
sobered France when she was intoxicated with false 
ideas, and roused her when she was for indulging in 
dreams ; but if the war does not come, and if the danger 
passes away, is it not probable that with peace and 
indolence the old taste for dangerous speculation will 
come back? 

These are the questions which we hear, and which 
English people especially frequently ask because their 
civilization, apart from any transient political condi- 
tions, makes them value a healthy France. It is re- 
markable that, along with them, another is often put, 
and nearly always understood, "Will your Government 
follow suit?" or again, "What sort of a Government 
do you think you have at present?" 

Travelling in Germany in 1805, Madame de Stael 
experienced a similar uncertainty. She saw that the 
Germans had a sublime philosophy, canonizing the will 
and pregnant with heroism, and yet they were cringing 
and unmanly, "using philosophy to account for that 
which is the most incompatible with philosophy ; respect 
for brute force, and the melting timorousness which 
transmutes this respect into admiration." She fully 
realized that the political state of Germany was re- 
sponsible for this weakness, and prayed for the advent 



Conclusion 337 

of free institutions to raise the manners to the level cf 
the theories. What would she have said if, instead of 
having to do with a philosophy of liberty confronted 
with despotism of a mild nature, she had seen a philo- 
sophy of reasonableness, courage, and self-denial at work 
in a democratic, and we may well say, a demagogic 
country? Surely she would have realized that heroism 
is in great jeopardy in a community governed by men 
whose interest it is to flatter weaknesses, and she would 
have said out loud what the English observer politely 
refrains from speaking but thinks all the same, and 
thinks so continuously that we cannot but be conscious 
of the thought: "Shall you have better men to make 
the most of your better spirit?" 

It is to this question that the last part of this book 
will be dedicated. 



PART III 
THE POLITICAL PROBLEMS AND THE FUTURE 



339 



PART III 

THE POLITICAL PROBLEMS AND THE FUTURE 

I. The Problem of the Two Spirits 

The problem which puzzled Madame de Stael during 
her stay in Germany in 1805 was: How is it that a 
philosophy of the will does not produce energetic men? 
The problem which has been haunting the mind of 
every Frenchman capable of thought since the Tangier 
incident and its terrifying effects has been : Will this 
philosophy of courage and order espoused more or less 
consciously by the immense majority of the nation 
get the better of the inferior tendencies still at work 
in the swampy confusion of French demagogism? 

In the early months of 19 13, when it became known 
that against all probability and above all in spite of 
the fury of the Radical party, M. Poincare, then Prime 
Minister, intended to stand for the Presidency, the 
problem was put in purely political terms and seemed 
exceedingly simple: Will M. Poincare get in in spite 
of the Radicals? For a few weeks the Prime Minister 
who had had the good fortune to appear at the begin- 
ning of the Balkan War as a statesman of international 
celebrity, and who stood in his own country for a reso- 
lute military reform as the basis of an effective patriotic 

341 



342 The Political Problems 

action, embodied all that was highest in the aspirations 
of France. 

An incident which, it is true, could not be overlooked, 
cooled the enthusiasm of some of his most hopeful ad- 
mirers. The ablest Minister in M. Poincare's Govern- 
ment was undoubtedly M. Millerand, to whom the 
French army owes more gratitude than to any general 
who has held office since 1875. Now M. Millerand, 
having discharged a duty of common honesty in re- 
deeming a promise made to M. du Paty de Clam — the 
well-known anti-Dreyfusist — by the Minister who had 
preceded him, was violently attacked for doing so. 
Another member of the Cabinet, M. Pams, arraigned 
his colleague in the Chamber, and M. Millerand felt 
compelled to resign at the very moment when his action 
was the most useful. M. Poincare did not shield his 
Minister of War, and many people were unpleasantly 
surprised at this passivity. Yet, as M. Poincare and 
M. Millerand were personal friends, the opinion gradu- 
ally prevailed that M. Millerand himself had insisted 
on M. Poincare's taking no steps lest an interference 
on his behalf should be in the way of his election as 
President. At any rate when, a few weeks afterwards, 
M. Poincare declared his intention to stand for the 
Presidency, his candidature was welcomed as the dawn 
of salvation by all Frenchmen thinking more of the 
interests of their country than of petty party intrigues ; 
and when the Radicals selected as an opponent to him 
the incarnation of party politics, M. Pams, the situa- 
tion was as clear as could be and highly exciting. 

For the first time since the election of Gr6vy in 1879, 
a Presidential election, though left — according to the 
constitution — to the Deputies and Senators in Congress, 
happened to be a national afiair, and M. Poincare had 



Problem of the Two Spirits 343 

on his side the majority of the nation while M. Pams 
was merely the man of straw of the Radicals. M. 
Poincare was elected, and during a few months the 
country felt as if all its best tendencies, now simimed up 
in one providential individual, were beyond the danger 
of untimely blighting. 

From the very day of the election there was no 
doubt that the Radicals would never forgive M. Poin- 
care, and that in the impossibility or quasi-impossibil- 
ity of ousting him they would at all events fight all his 
friends and impugn the ideas supposed to be dearest to 
him, viz., Proportional Representation, the Three- Year 
Military Law, and above all, a rapprochement with the 
moderate elements in Parliament recalling the far- 
away days of M. Meline. The country at large took 
in the situation and there was no uncertainty as to its 
preferences. The welcome which the President re- 
ceived everywhere during his tour in the South of France 
at the end of the summer of 19 13 was full of significance. 
It clearly meant: At last France has a President who 
is her representative and not merely the representative 
of politicians. Having been elected constitutionally he 
can be loved without treason, and his enemies may be 
regarded as the enemies of the country. So the over- 
throw of M. Briand by the Senate on the question of 
Proportional Representation was resented as an inso- 
lence. However, it was not looked upon as a personal 
defeat of the President. M. Barthou, who succeeded 
M. Briand, was as much as the latter in perfect unity 
of views with M. Poincare. Certainly he was not sup- 
posed to be as energetic as the President, He was a 
clever, graceful Southerner, not a stern Lorrain. Yet 
it soon appeared that this pleasant, genial man was not 
to be shaken from his position on at least one vital 



344 The Political Problems 

measure, the Three- Year Service Law, and people 
universally concluded that the indomitable courage 
he showed in defending this Bill was instilled into him 
by the President himself. 

The overthrow of M. Barthou in December, 19 13, 
therefore, came as a shock, and when M. Poincar6 gave 
his succession apparently to M. Doumergue but in 
reality to M. Caillaux — one of his sworn enemies — 
there was dismay. Some keener observers than the 
rest had already felt misgivings at noticing that the 
President would not take upon himself to remove, or 
in some way intimidate, any of the numerous prefects, 
who he must know were Radicals and likely to turn 
against rather than serve him ; some Catholic journalists 
had also pointed out with surprise that the President, 
who had agreed to act as witness at the marriage of a 
friend, had refused to go further than the mairie, and 
shirked the Church in true Combist bigotry. This was 
not all; during the trip in the South, M. Poincar6 had 
not dared to visit the old Romanesque church of Saint- 
Front at Perigueux, lest such a step should be inter- 
preted as a clerical manifestation. There was certainly 
an exaggeration of prudence in this. However, nobody 
had supposed that the President — who apparently real- 
ized, when he stood for his high position, that the 
situation was such that he must face his responsibilities 
in a different spirit from that of his predecessors — 
would accept a change of Cabinet obviously directed 
against him, without a word, without an effort, in the 
humble spirit of the Constitution of 1875, and exactly 
as M. Fallieres might have done. Some people will ask: 
"What could he do? Dissolving the Chamber was out 
of the question, as it cannot be done by the President 
without the concurrence of the Senate ; even a message, 



Problem of the Two Spirits 345 

even a speech, clear enough to be more than banal, 
wotdd have amounted to a coup d'etat. " 

Precisely. The situation forced upon the chief of the 
State by the Constitution of 1875, and above all by the 
interpretation of it by ten jealous Parliaments in suc- 
cession, gives the President no choice between a some- 
what daring attitude and complete self-effacement. M. 
Poincare has chosen the latter, and neither he nor any 
of the supporters of his policy of silence can protest 
against the effacement having been immediate and 
complete. Popularity never seeks failure, and the suc- 
cess of M. Caillaux appeared, even to the rudest peasant, 
as the President's defeat. 

No Englishman living in France can have felt other- 
wise than as if the curtain had fallen on the career of the 
brilliant Poincare one had imagined, and the gang of 
the professional politicians was coming to the forefront 
again. The general election of 19 14 only made this 
situation clearer; it was hardly construed as a defeat 
of M. Poincare — though in reality it was one — but 
that was because M. Poincare had practically dis- 
appeared from the stage. It is difficult to imagine that, 
having lost the opportunities which universal popular- 
ity offered him in the first year of his Presidency, he 
will seize others which will not be half so encouraging, 
and we may conclude that he will be, like his predeces- 
sors, a mere Constitutional President, that is to say, a 
President with power enough to appoint the Prime 
Ministers whom the Chamber wishes, but with no 
power to control either the Premier or the Chamber. 
If the Premiers are congenial, his intelligence and ex- 
perience, along with his patriotism, which nothing can 
weaken, will give him influence, but it will be the timid 
influence which alone is in keeping with the Constitu- 



34^ The Political Problems 

tion; if they are inimical, the awkwardness of his 
position will only emphasize the impossibility of shak- 
ing the tyranny of the majority. In any case, he will 
never be again, unless he should make a coup d'etat, 
the representative of the generous spirit which uplifted 
France and gathered every energy around him while he 
was Prime Minister. 

Does this mean that this spirit is doomed to die away 
and leave France once more as she was between 1898 
and 1905, without a national ideal or without the 
courage to realize it? Not by any means. The im- 
pulse given at Tangier, along with the slow but steady 
reintegration of healthy notions into public opinion, is 
evidently one of the events which history uses as land- 
marks, and which the disappearance of an individual 
only affects in a transient manner. France has been 
so long waiting for a man, a real man, that whoever 
succeeds in voicing her aspiration after order at home 
and dignity abroad, and in securing power were it only 
for a short time, will be welcomed as M. Poincare 
himself was. M. Briand, M. Barthou, above all, M. 
Millerand — by far the clearest head and the strongest 
hand this country has known since 1870, outside of the 
army — have, each one in succession, been that man, 
and may play the same part again. There may be 
others less known whom national feeling would be only 
too ready to acclaim. Two or three speeches showing 
character as well as rare abilities have been enough 
to place M. Andre Lefevre — until then a comparatively 
obscure Deputy — apart from the rest. 

But will the return of even these men to office mean 
the entrance of France into smooth waters and the end 
of nearly half a century of confusion? It might be so if 
some fortunate transformation of the Chamber should 



Problem of the Two Spirits 347 

give it the unity on a few vital points which made the 
Assemblee Nationale an effective collaborator of Thiers 
after the War and Commune, but until this transfor- 
mation happens, " clearings-up " will only be intervals 
of respite, after which the usual depression will set in 
again. The anxiety and lassitude evident in the utter- 
ances of such undoubted Republicans as M. de Lanessan, 
the former Minister of the Navy; M. Sembat, the bril- 
liant Socialist, and M. du Mesnil, the Radical editor of 
the Rappel, are shared by millions of their readers. 
The root of the evil is in a system which tolerates the 
occasional appearance of distinguished men — welcomed 
for the time being as liberators — but will not give them 
any real authority. As long as the Chamber remains 
supreme in France, discarding or selecting governments 
as it pleases without either the President or the Senate 
being able to act as counterweights, and as long as the 
same Assembly thus all-powerful consists of individuals 
trembling before their electors on one hand and regard- 
ing one another as the members of one great syndicate 
on the other, an enormous mass of excellent work (in 
the shape of reports and commission work, especially) 
will be wasted, the wishes of the better class of citizens 
will be nullified, and the presence of a few men really 
worth while at the head of the Government will only 
last long enough to make their defeat more disappoint- 
ing. There will ever be an indestructible opposition 
between the representatives of the elector and the 
representatives of France; a national spirit can have no 
chances with men rising from the "stagnant pools," 
nor will a truly national policy be carried on by Cabi- 
nets everlastingly changing and in the power of the 
groups in the Chamber. The experiment initiated in 
1876 has now lasted long enough for sure conclusions 



34^ The Political Problems 

to be arrived at, and the main conclusion is that the 
Constitution of 1875, in its essence as well as in its 
working, invariably proves productive either of anarchy 
or of tyranny, and sometimes of both at the same time, 
as was the fact under the Combes government. The 
history of France compared with that of Italy, for 
instance, in the last half century, is a demonstration of 
the danger of a bad constitution. 

The inference is plain; something must be done to 
modify a state of things about which there is no im- 
certainty, and this change, whatever its conditions and 
particular character, cannot but be in the direction of a 
stronger authority and of greater stability. The na- 
tional defence can no longer be left to the pleasure of 
fourscore of demagogues; the foreign policy must be 
something better than the routine of the bureaux or the 
random speculation of a new Minister; it must become 
impossible that a man of M. Poincare's talent and 
position should lose all his effectiveness merely because 
he ceases to be in the immediate dependence of the 
Deputies. In one word, authority and responsibility 
must be something else than words. 

2. Is a Change of Regime probable in France ? 

If we were to believe the many people who, in book, 
magazine, or newspaper, take their desires for realities, 
and unconsciously interpret their own disgust as an 
infallible sign of the times, there would be no doubt; a 
change must not only appear inevitable, but it could 
not be very far off. The formula at which all these 
sanguine people have arrived and which they repeat 
in the newspapers every day is: Either a change or a 
crash. 



A Change of Regime 349 

Are they right in their anticipation? 

It does not appear clear to everybody. It is not 
because the present system has given numberless 
proofs of its rottennes that it cannot go on. In fact, 
it was rotten from the first, and it has had not croakers, 
but clear-sighted critics round its very cradle. It is not 
because an institution is obviously imperfect that it 
cannot persist through a long historical period. The 
Ancien Regime dragged on for many a decade after its 
death had been prophesied. Why has the Republic 
managed to live since the establishment of its ruinous 
constitution? Because its very constitution makes it 
almost impossible for the country to bring about a 
change otherwise than through a sort of personal 
conversion, and such conversions are impossible to a 
nation. The vice of the constitution lies in the sub- 
ordination of every power to the Chamber, but it is the 
country which elects the Chamber, and there have been 
so far no sufficient motives at the moment of an election 
to bring home to the Electorate the necessity of a 
change. If a war were imminent, or if bankruptcy 
could evidently not be staved off much longer, or if 
business were fiat while taxation was high, perhaps — 
it is not certain — the elector might be persuaded to 
choose less selfish and other representatives, and, even 
without a change of constitution, such men might find 
in their convictions the unity of purpose which — 
whatever the constitution may be — insures order and 
stability. The sight of mere corruption is not enough 
to produce this effect ; the French have seen the Grevy 
and Wilson affair, the Panama affair, the Dreyfus con- 
fusion, even the recklessness of the Combes administra- 
tion with its scandalous disregard of common honesty 
as well as its indifference to national security; and all 



350 The Political Problems 

this has not been enough, because the cause of the evil 
once removed — Grevy resigning or Combes being re- 
moved from office by M. Clemenceau — the country 
finds itself in the presence of a Protean power — which is 
after all, its very image — and immediately becomes 
helpless. The dispersed consciousness of twelve mil- 
lions of electors cannot be expected to be more active 
than the consciousness of six hundred deputies. 

If then, the danger of a war can be put off either by 
Germany expanding in directions where she will have 
few chances of encountering France, or by the Socialist 
influence in the Chamber averting causes of friction 
at the cost of national dignity; if, as the past makes it 
probable, taxation can be raised much higher than it is 
and the public debt may be expected to rise in the same 
proportion as it has done since 1875; if, as is also prob- 
able, the commercial expansion of Germany and Amer- 
ica does not cramp for a long time the opportunities 
of French trade, the country may continue to live for 
years more in its indifference to politics. Of course 
France will suffer; her influence abroad cannot but go 
on rapidly dwindling, ruinous treaties may deprive her 
of colony after colony, her Exchequer may appear more 
and more as a formidable wager laid by Levity against 
Probability, but the crash, as it is called, may not 
come for years and years, say until Italy is strong 
enough to do what Germany would not have done. 

This is the answer which many people give to those 
who will see no alternative between a change and a 
crash. 

Theoretically this answer cannot be refuted; if the 
past foreshadows the future it may be the lot of the 
present generation to witness no change and yet see no 
crash either. But the formula "A change or a crash" 



A Change of Regime 35 1 

has too much of the epigram or even the jingle of words 
in its sound to serve as a basis for a serious discussion. 
The true question is: Are there any indications of a 
change? And if a change really takes place, what is it 
likely to be? So worded it brings us from the realm of 
possibilities to that of probabiHties, and we immediately 
see various facts which hardly anybody is inclined to 
question, and upon which we can build solidly. 

Let us recapitulate these facts. 

The first and not the least important is the existence 
in the national atmosphere of a longing, a sort of 
Messianic expectation of a better state of affairs than 
the present one. It may be only the proof that the 
French are not yet ripe for the intelligent use of what 
they call their Hberty. The yearning after some in- 
definite rescuer belongs to undeveloped natures and 
negatives all that self-reliance and all that independence 
of judgment which are supposed to be the moral accom- 
paniment in the individual of the democratic progress 
in a community. Certainly if the French elector, in- 
stead of being content with giving his vote once every 
four years, on no particular issue but exclusively on one 
particular person about whom he is generally full of 
doubts, were better aware of what he really wants, and 
understood how he can get it by the judicious use of the 
right of association, he would trust himself and nobody 
else, or if he looked for a man it would be a servant, or 
at best a champion, not a protector. However it may 
be, the fact is that France wants a new order of things, 
and is more or less conscious that her present woes are 
the product of her bad constitution. 

Some people will have it that it is an exaggeration to 
say that France wants a Rescuer, that is to say, ulti- 
mately a Master; she only feels the want of an author- 



352 The Political Problems 

ity and looks for it everywhere without confusing it with 
the personal influence of an individual. It may be so, 
but practically the two nuances are almost indiscernible. 
Throughout her history France has shown a taste for 
strong men, and the moment she felt that the Republi- 
can constitution which has fallen to her lot was an- 
tagonistic to powerful individuals, but favoured the 
tyranny of a kind of nondescript oligarchy, this taste 
reappeared. The popularity of Boulanger in 1886, of 
Rouvier and Clemenceau — unpopular as they had been 
— in the years following the Tangier incident, of M. 
Poincare in 1912, are well-known instances of this 
propensity. 

In spite of long years of anti-militarism, the French 
have never lost their partiality for the brilliant 
soldier. After Boulanger it was Marchand, after 
Marchand, Gallieni, and since then D'Amade and Ly- 
autey. The tendency is to regard a successful general, 
not merely as a brave and able technician, but as a 
rarely gifted man who, after conquering a country, 
finds no difficulty in organizing and administrating it, 
and does so through simple methods of his own which 
the plodding intelligence of the civilian will never dis- 
cover. The tradition of Bonaparte is still alive, and the 
majority of Frenchmen have known soldiers who came 
back from Algeria full of admiration for the genius of 
Bugeaud and Lamoriciere. 

This longing for energy, coupled with the admiration 
for order, which has become part once more of the 
national temperament after being long banished from it, 
shows even a more unexpected effect; it has gradually 
produced a sort of tacit reconciliation of the more cul- 
tivated Frenchman with the Monarchist idea. It is re- 
markable that under Louis Philippe, and especially under 



A Change of Regime 353 

Napoleon the Third, the Republican idea was mostly 
upheld by the bourgeoisie; the lower classes were quite 
sujfficiently loyal to the "citizen-king," and enthusiasti- 
cally devoted to the nephew of the great Emperor. 
To-day the situation is reversed; after years of aliena- 
tion — caused mostly by the recollections of 18 14 and 
the mistakes of Louis XVIII and Charles X — the 
bourgeoisie, apart from professional politicians, have 
become estranged from the Republic and have assumed 
towards the possibility of a restoration a neutral atti- 
tude which is easily changed into sympathy. Sym- 
pathy would probably be more frequent if the leaders 
of the Action Frangaise were less violent under pretence 
of being energetic, and above all less noisy under pre- 
tence of being violent; if their polemics were not 
constantly personal, and if purely journalistic denuncia- 
tions — often built on frail foundations — did not 
occasionally give them the appearance of being in that 
crude stage of party spirit in which determination is 
so resolute as to disregard good faith. 

As it is, they possess a magnetism for many young 
men, and have diffused a number of arguments in 
favour of traditionalism, which, presented by soberer ex- 
ponents than themselves, slowly penetrate into milieus 
which the Action Frangaise itself does not reach or 
would immediately repel. 

This is not the only cause of a modification of the 
bourgeoisie towards the Monarchist tradition. In fact 
there are many others. To begin with, the youthful 
sympathies with the Republic of fifty years ago have 
become aged and wrinkled, while the old grievances 
against the Monarchy were sinking more and more into 
the past. Then the criticisms against the insufficiency 
of the Republican constitution daily read in newspapers 
23 



354 The Political Problems 

of every opinion have produced a simultaneous — though 
sometimes unconscious — attention to the advantages 
of stronger constitutions. The French mind has risen 
from the vagueness of sympathies and antipathies in 
which shibboleths and formulae kept it so long to a more 
lucid examination of the pros and cons and to conclu- 
sions deserving to be called doctrines. At the same 
time the remnants of Romanticist phraseology, which 
described a Monarch in the words of Michelet or Victor 
Hugo as a "tyrant on horseback," were rapidly be- 
coming ridiculous, while the taste of Verlaine for the 
courtly atmosphere of the eighteenth century appeared 
to be shared by many people open to the charm of old 
France. Artists are full of it; numberless writers can- 
not dissociate it from the style they prefer; you notice 
it not only in traditional Englishmen but even in demo- 
cratic Americans, with whom it is part of culture and a 
yearning of the imagination. In short, another atmos- 
phere has been created in which historic considerations 
seem totally different from what they were fifty years 
ago. For a long time there existed deep in the French 
consciousness an antipathy against the idle aristocracy 
supposed to be the natural environment of a Monarchy. 
The self-effacement of the titled classes along with the 
evident effort of some of their representatives to make 
the most of changed circumstances and be as loyal as 
they could to modern principles has dispelled this in 
part. At the same time the criticisms of industrial 
conditions repeated in a thousand forms by the Socialist 
writers brought it home to the workers that the modern 
feudal lord is the manufacturer, and the real duke the 
financier. The last inherited prejudices are rapidly 
disappearing before this realization of concrete facts. 
Perhaps the best chance of the Monarchy lies in the 



A Change of Regime 355 

observations and comparisons which the taste for travel- 
ling now common to ail social classes inevitably pro- 
duces. For many years the French had a bookish habit 
of attacking or defending the monarchical institutions 
exclusively from historic considerations. The writers 
on the Action Frangaise have preserved it, and it is a 
mistake on their part, for the evocation of long-dis- 
appeared conditions does not help in making up one's 
mind about questions of the vital present. Living 
comparisons between the prosperity and the policies 
of the countries we visit and those of our own country 
are far more illuminating. This accounts for a con- 
siderable mental change with respect to the monarchical 
institutions in people who have frequently been abroad. 
Their first feeling, when they have grown up in an 
exaggeratedly Republican milieu, is some surprise at 
finding no striking difference between the liberty they 
enjoy at home, and that which they find beyond the 
frontier. They never feel the unpleasant vicinity of 
tyranny, and if they happen to see — in Belgium, for 
instance, or in Scandinavia, or even in Germany — a 
more frequent and more conscious use of the right of 
association than they had expected, the truth is sud- 
denly brought home to them that liberty is only a word 
or at best, an aspiration, while liberties are positive 
rights daily exercised and valued in consequence. From 
that surprise they pass easily to a fair examination of 
the connection between what they see and its political 
causes; if their minds are lazy and sceptical, they be- 
come confirmed in the indifference towards the form of 
government which is so frequent in France at the pres- 
ent day; if they are intellectually more virile, it is not 
rare to see them arrive at definite conclusions, and 
declare that even faulty monarchical constitutions 



35^ The Political Problems 

appear far superior in their effects to a poor system 
of laws decorated with the name of constitution. 

This is generally more of a speculative or at best 
expectant attitude than a conviction ready to engender 
propagandism, and many of those uncertain converts 
would be as ready to welcome a Napoleon as a prince of 
Orleans, but they would gladly see the prospect of a 
change, and they look forward to it. If you will con- 
sider that this more or less definite aspiration, after a 
better regime, is increased by the universal longing for 
a strong man, you will not be surprised at a statement 
which the least familiarity with the background makes 
almost evident, and which can be put in the simplest 
terms, viz., a coup d'etat by a moderately sympathetic 
person not only would meet with no indignation, but 
would hardly cause any surprise. Vaguely, I admit, 
but so powerfully, the yearning after strength, author- 
ity, and order has taken hold of the best French, 
especially in Paris, that a coup de force must be a 
habitual if semi-conscious thought with them. 

Leaving aside for the present the possible actors in 
such a drama, let us content ourselves with trying to 
imagine the conditions in which it would take place, 
and the feelings with which it would be received in 
Paris. Who are the people against whom this violent 
operation would be conducted? Ask anybody living 
in France; his embarrassment will show you at once 
that the tyrant one would have to get rid of, is not very 
formidable. It is not the President, it is not exactly 
the Ministers, though some might be objectionable, it 
is not exactly the Chamber, though it often appears as 
a syndicate of dangerous babblers, and though the 
Constitution works its worst effects through it. It is 
rather the Senate, because the Senate has negatived a 



A Change of Regime 357 

good impulse of the other Assembly on at least one 
important reform — the Reform of the Suffrage — and 
because it is the stronghold of the Radicals, who once 
preferred M. Pams to M, Poincare. But who is likely 
to show fight in the Upper Assembly? Who are the 
influential or resolute persons whom it would be 
dangerous to let at large on the morrow of a coup d'etat^ 
because they might summon together the bravest in the 
two Houses and try to form a centre of resistance 
somewhere? The list is so short that it appears ridicu- 
lous. Yes, if the resolute man, or group of men whom 
we suppose, were to lay hold of a dozen individuals 
in the Chamber and Senate, among whom M. Clemen- 
ceau, M. Jaures, and M. Caillaux would probably be 
the most conspicuous — and of three or four newspaper 
editors — perhaps only one or two — and if the Parlia- 
mentary session were suspended for a brief period, the 
whole affair would appear so natural as to be little more 
than an exciting f ait-divers. There might be an uncom- 
fortable feeling in the public if the newspapers did not 
appear in the morning, but this would be a mistake 
which no intelligent men would make, and with papers 
to give them the particulars of the operation, the 
Parisians would be so pleased that long before noon 
they would be enthusiastic. Some people will imagine 
that the Bourse du Travail might become the centre of 
resistance I mentioned above; but that is an imagina- 
tion. The Bourse du Travail is not so formidable as 
it used to be ; M. Barthou had it searched by the police 
in the last months of 191 3, and several of its chiefs were 
imprisoned without much protest; as to the supposed 
interest which these syndicates might take in the 
Socialist Deputies, it would never be transmuted into 
heroism, and of this the Socialist Deputies themselves 



358 The Political Problems 

entertain little doubt. I firmly believe that a fortnight 
after the coup d'etat, the few persons whose liberty 
might have been temporarily suppressed, could without 
any danger be released. The more one thinks over 
these possibilities the more one sees that the rampart 
between a dictator and his success is neither public 
opinion, nor any strongly organized and sufficiently 
popular party, but a Senate and Chamber so divided 
and weak, so impregnated themselves with the belief 
in a change, that resistance on their part would practi- 
cally be impossible. To sum up in one brief formula, 
both the tyrants of France and her possible Uberator 
are anonymous, but the tyrant is a cardboard giant 
who has long ceased to be a scarecrow, while the 
liberator is a living hope. 

The conclusion of this analysis of pubHc opinion 
seems naturally to be: a coup d'etat or a coup de force 
cannot be long delayed. This is indeed according to the 
logic of emotions, and shows how powerful the con- 
tagion of a widely-spread belief invariably is; but the 
advisability of doing a thing or the extreme facility for 
doing it is only one element in the psychology of those 
who ought to do it, and leaves unaffected the probability 
or improbabiHty of their accompHshing it. The fact is 
that the few men who might be inclined to make a 
coup detat in France are not likely to attempt it, 
and as to the multitude which expects this from 
them, it is in that state of expectation which is 
productive of effects sometimes amazing, but is 
seldom rewarded by seeing the fulfilment of its hopes. 
There are at the present moment two of those pow- 
erful visions acting magnetically upon French people ; 
the "Grand Soir" with the Syndicalists, and the Re- 
storation with the Monarchists, and, although the latter 



A Change of Regime 359 

has immeasurably better chances than the former, it 
will probably be a cause of disappointment. 

A coup d'etat in the stage of civilization we have 
reached, with the organization of the police, the 
facilities for rapid information and for rapid communi- 
cations, is impossible without an immediate preparation 
which makes it in the end a matter of course. Now, 
the Duke of Orleans has indeed a certain number of 
passionately loyal adherents, and it is a fact that a 
great many other people are, with regard to his possible 
advent, in a state of friendly neutrality which success 
would rapidly change into declared sympathies; but 
his really effective friends are too well known to the 
police, they are too far from the magic telephone re- 
ceivers, without which it is useless to think of rousing 
Paris, to dream of any serious attempt, and it is prob- 
able that the hand-book in which two of them have 
described how the coup de force ought to be carried 
out will remain their nearest approach to action.^ 
They will gradually subside into the delusion I men- 
tioned above, in which people are siure of an event 
coming to pass because it ought to take place, and con- 
fuse possibility with probability. This mental disposi- 
tion helps men to wait for years without dying of 
impatience, and moreover it is no inconsiderable factor 
in the formation of opinion. 

Prince Victor Napoleon stands much better chances. 
It is true that his political doctrine is inferior in con- 
sistency and cogency to that of the other Pretender — 
the plebiscite or referendum on which it is built is a 
terrible element of weakness in a constitution — ^but in a 
time when the universal desire tends towards a man, 
the doctrine itself matters little; controversy over it 

^ Le Coup de Force, est il possible? by C. Maurras and Dutrait Crozon. 



360 The Political Problems 

would only begin long after its representative had been 
at the head of affairs. Now, Prince Napoleon enjoys 
the advantage of the immense popularity which litera- 
ture and art have gained and will long maintain, if not 
for himself at least for his name; the criticisms of the 
mistakes made by Napoleon the Third, which I pointed 
out in the first part of this book, are hardly known 
outside a small circle of specialists, and those mistakes 
were the errors of an individual rather than of a regime; 
above all, his personal situation is superior to that of his 
rival. A happier marriage, with children and an im- 
mense fortune, is no mean asset, but this is only one 
detail. The chief superiority of Prince Victor lies in 
the fact that while the Duke of Orleans has no friends 
in active political circles, his rival is in touch with 
influential men very near the centre of affairs, and with 
financiers who may be even more influential. The 
facility with which a Radical can become an Imperialist, 
and vice versa, is an historical law which is not likely 
to be contradicted in the near future. Against these 
apparently overwhelming chances is the improbability 
of three Bonapartes forcibly securing power in little 
more than a century, the comparatively advanced age 
of Prince Victor, and the passivity which his frequent 
allusions to the plehiscitarian doctrine almost inevitably 
engender. One may safely prophesy that if a movement 
of public opinion should call Prince Victor back from 
his exile, he would promptly be in a position to make 
the coup d'etat, but it is because in that case the coup 
d'etat would be merely a sort of formality. 

The only person who could do with the greatest ease 
what the others could do only with tremendous dif- 
ficulty is President Poincare. Even after missing 
several opportunities (especially at the time of the fall 



A Change of Regime 361 

of M. Barthou) any bold initiative on his part would be 
welcome — a message to the Chamber in the manly tone 
of that of President Woodrow Wilson on the Panama 
Canal would produce as much impression as a dissolu- 
tion. As to the energetic operation which I described 
above, with the suspension of the Parliamentary session 
for a brief period, and the imprisonment of a dozen 
people, anybody with eyes to see must realize that it 
could be done with the concurrence of just three people : 
the Minister of the Interior, the Minister of War, and 
the Prefect of PoUce ; and it is not difficult to name the 
men who ought to hold these posts to make the opera- 
tion wonderfully easy, in the general inertness of the 
lookers-on and the perfect isolation of the Radicals and 
Socialists who alone might wish to oppose it. 

But the President will not do this. He has settled 
down too rapidly into the perfect constitutional atti- 
tude, ^ and perhaps his political training has made him 
more hke his own enemies than the atmosphere in which 
he was elected allows us, the public, to realize. 

Yet the possibility of a Republican coup d'etat with 
the establishment of some regime recalling the Directory 
still remains. M. Poincare would be in this combina- 
tion, naturally, but not as the principal actor, and the 
plot being little more than a lobby intrigue would not 
appear formidable to the protagonists. Perhaps, the 
responsibility being shared among several, and the risks 
appearing inconsiderable, an opportunity will be enough 
to nerve the possible directors to decision. Whatever 
might be the results — probably ephemeral, but in the 
right direction. — of their action, the resistance they would 
meet would come only from rival ambitions, and the 
country would witness the change with perfect serenity. 

' Vide his address at Lyons on May 24, 191 4. 



362 The Political Problems 

What I have said so far sounds rather paradoxical; 
circumstances are such that they invite the resolute 
interference of a strong man, but the conditions in 
which the likeliest persons find themselves seem to 
preclude any probability of their making up their 
minds to interfere; a coup d'etat never appeared more 
advisable, but what is the good or even the interest if 
everything indicates that it will not take place? 

I disclaimed from the first any intention of doing 
more than to point out definite symptoms in the public 
mind, or in its chief representatives, and draw there- 
from the most cautious inferences. Now the fact sub- 
sists that in spite of everything discouraging the hope 
that a strong man will appear to redress glaring de- 
ficiencies, the hope of seeing order restored in France 
through a strengthened authority does not perish. 
Such a feeling, conscious as it appears in numberless 
articles, and in that highly enlightening volume, Faites 
un Roi, Sinon Faites la paix, by the Socialist Sembat, is 
eminently one of those motive ideas which Fouillee 
called idees-forces. An aspiration of this intensity 
directed towards a Restoration would inevitably bring 
the King back, if circumstances were more favourable ; 
directed towards the return to authority, when the 
opposition to it is merely the selfishness and jejune talk 
of a few hundred politicians, it must produce some 
effect. 

What the effect would be might remain doubtful if 
it were indefinite in the minds of those who work for its 
realization. But this is not the case. By dint of feeling 
and deploring deficiencies, the remedies have gradually 
been found, and for the last five or six years they have 
been made the basis of an extensive political agitation. 
M. Charles Benoist, one of the best-known popularizers 



A Change of Regime 363 

of political science in France, circulated these general 
ideas through the whole country during the election of 
1914, but they had long been common property, and 
they are a familiar topic in far-away village inns. What 
M. Sembat calls the "top-gap" — le trou par en haul — 
would be sufficiently filled in if the President of the 
Republic, instead of being a "hat and not a head," 
should be given at least the authority and range of 
action of a Prime Minister — in fact, if he became the 
daily heard leader that Thiers was in the early years 
of the Republic ; if the Cabinet Ministers were chosen 
outside Parliament, or if at any rate they had to give 
up their Parliamentary position, as in England, before 
taking office; if Proportional Representation were sub- 
stituted for the present electioneering system; and if 
some sort of decentralization could counteract the enor- 
mous bureaucratic congestion bequeathed to France by 
Napoleon the First. That these simple reforms would 
immediately transform the political outlook is univer- 
sally realized, even by the handful who would be losers 
in it; and, if they were actually brought about, the 
sensation that an authority at last existed in France 
would at once be felt. 

Now the consciousness that between this relief and 
its easy means there is only the weakness of the Cham- 
ber, has grown to a degree in which it appears im- 
possible that the Chamber, blind and lame as its origins 
make it, should not realize it as well, and the Revision 
of the Constitution seems inevitable. 

How this will be done is a minor detail. Perhaps the 
Proportional Representation Bill will be passed first, 
and, its moralizing influence being certain, it may 
gradually drag the rest in its train. Perhaps things will 
happen very differently. It is not impossible — nay, it 



364 The Political Problems 

is much more in keeping with the French aptitude for 
sudden impulses and wide-reaching efforts after long 
periods of indolence — that they should suddenly make 
up their minds to rebuild the whole Constitution and 
revise it in every detail. The national inclination for 
vast systems would give itself free play in the effort, 
and nobody will doubt that the same genius which in a 
few years' time produced the Code Civil, would in a few 
months produce a tolerable system of constitutional 
laws. A new Assemblee Constituante with the memo- 
ries of the errors of the first as a lesson, and the for- 
midable teaching of contemporary European poUtics 
to enlighten it, might find in wisdom the same pleasure 
that the Utopians of 1848 took in generosity. We have 
every reason to mistrust assemblies, but there are 
motives at the present day for thinking that an assem- 
bly could not but be influenced by the great wave of 
practical good sense beating outside it. 

Who knows? It is not impossible that such a Con- 
stituante might resume the work of the first at the 
precise point where it diverged from the tradition of 
France, and instead of a Democracy — improved it is 
true, but still bearing in itself the elements of instability 
inherent in democracies — should give us a stronger 
constitution. It may look like a dream, but the first 
Napoleon was an impossible dream in 1798, and the 
second was hardly less of one even in 1848. 

Yet, let us not be carried away too far by the logic 
of events. The only certainty that seems to deserve 
this name is the certainty of a strengthening of au- 
thority. The mode of this strengthening will be de- 
termined by circumstances, as its time may be put 
back by the hope of peace or advanced by inter- 
national difficulties, but everything points to the 



The Democratic Progress 365 

disappearance of the legal anarchy known as the 
Constitution of 1875. 

3. Inevitability of the Democratic Progress 

Ought we to look further than the immediate proba- 
bilities and ask ourselves what the tantalizing future 
may be? Why not? The anticipation of things to come 
appears frequently to be as illuminating as the lesson 
of history itself. 

Now, if it seems certain that the gradual return of 
France to her traditional habits of mind, along with the 
political necessities she has to face, must sooner or later 
bring her back to a regime in which the multitude wiU 
no longer be ruler, it seems no less certain that the rise 
of the lower classes cannot and will not be impeded. 
The word Democracy means two very different things: 
it means, first of all, the absurdity which places sov- 
ereignty in numbers and entrusts the responsibility of 
the common welfare to those who are the least able to 
bear it, but it means also the extension of better ma- 
terial conditions and of a higher intellectual and moral 
culture to those who so far have not had the benefit of 
them. 

Now the history of the nineteenth century in Europe 
and America leaves no doubt that what interests 
modem minds the most in the development of nations 
is this kind of democracy. When we look back upon 
the history of France or England — ^in which merely 
political elements have played less part than in the 
history of Germany or Italy — we are immediately 
conscious that, compared with it, all the rest — evolu- 
tion of parties, succession of governments, etc. — shrinks 
into insignificance. Such a test cannot deceive us. 



366 The Political Problems 

It is a fact that the millions, which before the ex- 
pansion of industrialism and the enormous enlargement 
of armies were practically part of the soil, and hardly- 
distinguished from the agricultural map of countries, 
have, acquired, owing to this double organization, a 
consciousness of the part they play which makes them 
completely new factors in the history of nations. To- 
day, the most obscure workman in an out-of-the-way 
factory knows that some of his country's security and 
some of its productivity rests upon him, and the exer- 
cise he is taught to make of the right of association 
magnifies a hundredfold for him the consciousness he 
may have of his importance. The political organiza- 
tion of the various countries in which this element is 
found has little to say to it. It is the same in England 
in spite of long traditions, in Belgium in spite of un- 
heard-of prosperity, in Germany in spite of the iron 
rod, in Japan in spite of recent victory and intoxicating 
rise, and in the United States itself in spite of the 
delusive optimism in which its workers live. The 
governments may be strong or weak, they may object 
to this movement or endeavour to guide it, the move- 
ment is there all the same and will not be ignored. 

It is a pity that the theorist of the best-known system 
of a political Restoration in France, M. Maurras, should 
have given a purely literary solution to a problem which 
he could not leave out, but which evidently he disliked 
considering in its concrete significance. This may be 
partly the cause of some of the antipathy which yet 
subsists in many milieus against the Monarchy, al- 
though no essential antagonism can be pointed out 
between such a form of government and the democratic 
development. 

M. Maurras is not only a Monarchist, but a resolute 



The Democratic Progress 367 

oligarchist, and the consequence of this last tendency 
is the return to nothing less than a caste organization. 
I have already given the main line of what is Integral 
Nationalism, and a brief criticism of its exaggeration 
will be sufficient here. 

M. Maurras and his friends are almost all converted 
sceptics whose conversion has been brought about by 
the sight of the decadence of their country, and who 
have rebuilt their creed upon patriotism. They have 
seen that the most frequent consequence of a metaphy- 
sical culture is the superb indifference of Renan in his 
early period to patriotic contingencies, and their soul 
rebels against it. The true basis on which a man ought 
to seat his life is the sacred soil of his country, and 
whatsoever will not agree with patriotism must be 
regarded as immediately false. Now it appears clearly 
that Democratism and all the sentimental progress 
dreamed of since the Revolution are dangerous, be- 
cause they are the offspring of emotion and imagination 
instead of reason, and invariably stand in the way of a 
nation's greatness. Therefore let them be discarded, 
and let something more substantial be substituted for 
them. What this something should be is not difficult to 
find out. Experience proves that the strongest society 
which history has known so far is the Catholic Church. 
Let us then copy its constitution. But some people 
who — like M. Maurras himself, and in his own words — 
"feel uncomfortable so long as the notion of a Deity is 
forced upon them," will object to a civil ideal being 
derived from a religious society ; what can be suggested 
to them? Here again the answer is easy: The Catholic 
Church has had a model in the Roman Empire, and 
whoever meditates on the organization of the Roman 
Empire will see that real civic stability lay there be- 



368 The Political Problems 

cause the reason of the best few imposed its will upon 
the vagaries of the many. 

Here M. Maurras appears in perfect agreement with 
Renan in La Rejorme Intellectuelle de la France; in the 
works of both men we see the necessity of a special class 
to think for the rest and govern them according to 
reason. 

But the question cannot be entirely left out : What is 
the role of the lower classes, and what share in the 
patriotic development will be given to them? It would 
be difficult for a modern man, no matter how remote 
from Christianity, to be satisfied with the pagan views 
about the poor, and difficult above all to state them 
openly. The theorists of Nationalism have cast about 
for a solution and found one, for which, however, they 
have to thank M. Barres more than their own ingenuity. 
The lower classes are not capable of thought, but they 
are capable of emotion, and if their children are brought 
up in the best traditions of the nation, if their artisans 
are also kept within the tradition of their trade, their 
emotions will be in the right direction, and may serve 
as a sentimental reserve in which the intellect of their 
betters will have its roots. In that way there will be 
unity and harmony, order and a hierarchy. 

I said above that this solution was merely literary. 
In fact, it only looks well on paper but will not stand a 
practical investigation, as is the case with most of the 
theories of the same school. These philosophers detest 
sentimental dreams, but they enjoy intellectual air- 
castles. If the whole world were moving towards the 
ideal they propose, it might be possible, by dint of 
eloquence and persuasion, to give satisfaction to the 
working classes with the noble though modest role 
assigned to them. But exceptions would be dangerous, 



The Democratic Progress 369 

and the germs of rebellion would inevitably come from 
them even into the best-guarded monarchies. Now, 
far from there being a move towards a separation of 
classes and a return to castes, it is too evident that we 
see the reverse. In spite of the daily effort made by M. 
Maurras to convince us that, in Germany for instance, 
the pubHc spirit as well as uncompromising govern- 
ments never let the Socialist theories interfere with the 
practical welfare of the country, it is certain that 
there, as elsewhere, the millions all tend towards an 
economical independence which will raise them above 
their present station. This in itself has nothing in com- 
mon with Socialism or even Democratism. A man is no 
Socialist because he wants to be better off. Yet in the 
long rtm the economic evolution of the lower classes 
must result in political changes. With independence 
culture also will come, and with this the consciousness 
of the new right to have a word to say in one's country's 
affairs. Underneath the universal straining of the lower 
classes after better material circumstances lies their 
longing to be something more than a sentimental 
reserve. 

It is needless to say that if the dogma of Christian 
fraternity is not, on any account, to be made convertible 
into the chimera of equality, and cannot therefore be 
regarded as synonymous with any levelling notion, it is, 
on the contrary, easily reconcilable with the idea of a 
moral and intellectual bettering which the classes at 
present termed higher ought to promote in every possi- 
ble way; the two great forces at work in the world, 
faith and material progress, meet at this point. 

As a conclusion, it seems difficult to resist the prob- 
ability that the rise of the working-classes will go on in 
spite of the dangers caused by some of its revolutionary 

84 



370 The Political Problems 

aspects. And it is possible that some day civilizations 
may exist on this globe in which the idea of social 
inequalities will be practically done away with, but 
which may not have lost the territorial feeling. Such 
communities might be as hostile to one another as 
Sparta was to Athens. But this is not an immediate 
probability. Present symptoms, on the contrary, point 
to a victory of the class conception over the old terri- 
torial idea; and if, as may be expected, the gradual 
progress of Syndicalism eliminates finance with its 
greed and militarism with its violence from the 
dangerous points at which wars have been so far pro- 
duced, long periods of peace can easily be imagined. 

The consequence is plain. If this should be the case, 
the globe would witness a universal estabUshment of 
what in default of another word we may call himianita- 
rian principles, and with their extension the old form 
of patriotism associated with territories and frontiers 
would become more and more philosophical, milder 
and more poetic, until it would appear to have been 
in its present notion crude and uncivilized. 

4. A Moral Solution to the Political Problem 

If patriotism, as we at present conceive it, is thus 
doomed to disappear in the contempt of the wise, is it 
very necessary that we should trouble ourselves so 
much about its immediate destinies, and that in order 
to save a sort of intellectual category we should steel 
ourselves against our neighbours, look upon their 
progress as our ruin, and go back to barbarism when 
everything about us is becoming gentler? 

This is the objection that will often present itself 
to the modern mind morbidly anxious over its every 



A Moral Solution 371 

thought and impulse, everlastingly fearful of wasting 
any chance of immediate advantage, and trying in 
everything to see the consequence of all its actions into 
eternity. Many a good man has been enervated by this 
kind of philosophy, the first effect of which is to throw 
all that we think and do out of the human scale by 
isolating it in the solitude of ages to come. 

We have reasons to fear that people open to this kind 
of reasoning would not reject another line of argument 
which, however, is a great deal more shocking. If the 
idea of possible peace between our nation and its 
neighbours in the far-away future is enough to annihi- 
late the energy of these long-sighted men, the certitude 
of changes to take place much sooner ought unfortu- 
nately to be enough to produce the same effect. The 
vision of iiniversal peace is not a discovery of modern 
philosophers, and since it has been in the dreams of 
poets, many nations have risen, been transformed, and 
finally have melted away like snow into the earth. Why 
should we take such pains over the preservation of 
accidents without a substance? It is a folly to give 
much attention to mere geographical outlines or even to 
racial characteristics which slowly but inevitably wear 
away. The map of France has been as changing as if it 
were designed on water. In the last hundred years or so 
the artificial importance attached by the Romanticists 
to languages and to racial bonds has seemed to confer 
more solidity on wide family groupings, but even this is 
a delusion as much as a novelty. The Middle Ages 
thought no more of languages than of frontiers, and if 
there were abuses in those times they certainly were 
not caused by this indifference to geography. In spite 
of all that we may do, one millennium or two will make 
the French language as different from itself as it is at 



372 The Political Problems 

present from Latin, and the inhabitants of the Seine 
and Loire valleys will be as iincertain of their French 
descent as we are to-day of our Prankish or Gaul 
origins. Why not be resigned to that which is not only 
inevitable in the future, but is in the making at the 
very moment we speak? 

It is needless to enter into a controversy on these 
subjects. Universal peace will be doubtful so long as 
there are men with wants and passions and a desire to 
get as much as possible by giving as little as they can, 
but the mutability of geographical contingencies is a 
fact and all that is said about it is irrefutable. But 
something else is irrefutable because it can be deduced 
from the same premises, that is the vital distinction 
between the intellectual and the emotional order, and 
the superiority of the former as a factor of true 
happiness in man's life. 

Political events mean nothing in themselves; com- 
mercial agreements after long diplomatic controversies, 
remodellings of frontiers in an unvisited colony, ex- 
changes of influence, substitutions of protectorates, etc. 
— all these have no more significance than mere changes 
of Government, and many a man has led a good and 
full life without taking any notice of them. But there 
are times when everybody feels compelled to give his 
attention to these apparently indifferent affairs. Then 
the situation changes at once; we have to adopt an 
attitude, and according to the side we choose we find 
that our self-esteem rises or decreases. It is the case 
whenever oiir freewill and no longer our intellect is the 
arbitrator; we are placed before the alternative of 
acting like men or feeling like cowards, and the con- 
tingencies which have brought about this alternative 
soon recede into the background and vanish. 



A Moral Solution 373 

So we know nothing about the future except that 
the ethical Hfe of man in ten thousand years will be 
subject to the same laws as to-day. The notion of 
fraternity may have prevailed then in such a manner 
that civilizations will not only appear more perfect 
than at present, but may even call forth the best 
tendencies in every man, yet this is not certain. It may, 
on the contrary, have degenerated into some sort of 
Buddhism in which a feminine gentleness would replace 
more virile virtues, and then where would be the profit? 

Whatever may happen when our short lives have long 
bubbled out, a problem lies before us about which we 
have to make up our minds at once. Two tendencies 
offer themselves to us which it was for years difficult to 
characterize, and which only the clearer-sighted could 
define satisfactorily to themselves, but which the flash 
of lightning of 1905 suddenly made perfectly plain- 
On one side we see the Socialist philosophy which might 
have been very different from what it is, but which, 
having gone to Materialism for its metaphysics, paid 
the penalty of such a mistake by being — not in the acts 
of the workers, but in the speeches of its theorists — low, 
cynical, and ill-bred — ^in a word, the philosophy of 
the belly. On the other side is the simple, patriotic 
feeling, with no philosophy at its back, but a great 
moral radiance which would not be there unless it had 
reason on its side. Patriotism does not bother about 
metaphysical rights and wrongs, it cares nothing for 
philosophy, and cares only for that much of history 
which it carries in itself. It does not take the trouble 
either to scan scientifically the causes of the situation 
before which it is placed; it hears a great deal that 
seems probable enough and disgusting enough about 
the responsibility of bankers and great money-makers 



374 The Political Problems 

in wars ; it even realizes that the ambition of a Napoleon 
or that of a Bismarck are not altogether pure, but at no 
time is this sufficient to damp its energy, and when, as 
is the case in France at the present moment, every- 
thing tends to simplify the alternative in which it finds 
itself, nothing obscures its vision. Its choice is between 
the lazy or cynical forgetfulness of the events which in 
1870 detached more than a million Frenchmen from 
France and forced an unprecedented humiliation upon 
her, between the not very remote danger of another 
invasion with its shameful or horrible consequences, 
and the acceptance of the baptism of blood which the 
Tangier demonstration made an immediate possibility 
in 1905 and the Agadir affair transformed into an all- 
powerful attraction in 191 1. Philosophy, evolution, 
words of all kinds, fraternity in disguise, the watch- 
words of parties, the hypocritical ranting of politicians, 
all this vanishes before the prospect of losing that which 
Socialism calls vain geographical appearances, but 
which a man worthy of the name regards as the condi- 
tion of his most valued life and of his self-esteem. The 
future will be what it may, but the present is not am- 
biguous, and if it had been less perspicuous this book 
could not have been written. After a century of play- 
ing with ideas and mistaking words for things, the 
French have turned their forces towards the fields 
in which men meet men, actions count for speeches, and 
courage is the highest philosophy; if the nation could 
have at present the chiefs — let alone useless representa- 
tives — ^who would really feel as it does, there would be 
no doubt left that since 1905 an era has been closed and 
another has dawned which will see a simplification of 
men's ideas and a strengthening of their feelings. 
Indeed, vmder the patriotic impulse which I have 



A Moral Solution 375 

followed in its manifestations, there is more than one 
reaction. There is not only the weariness of scepticism, 
the longing after clear principles on which to base one's 
life even at the cost of the long-valued right to exercise 
free thought in every domain, but there is also another 
kind of lassitude. I referred at the beginning of this 
chapter to one great modern characteristic which is 
an everlasting consciousness of comfort or discomfort — 
moral as well as physical — in their minutest percep- 
tibility, a careful doling out of our efforts, as if all our 
soul might go out of us by drops, a perpetual anxiety 
not to be imposed upon or made to do more than our 
share which spoils married lives themselves as it em- 
bitters the intercourse between classes, in short a 
general stinginess in the exercise of our faculties and in 
the use of our existence. Modern men all seem to be 
neurotic subjects shut up in their houses but fearing 
visitors, and in default of something worse to tax their 
nerves resenting the ringing of a bell and the barking 
of a dog. This, in the long run, results like everything 
else in a reaction. That exquisite selfishness sooner or 
later disgusts, because it is not only ashamed of itself, 
but self -torturing as well. Comparisons are made be- 
tween this disquietude — in spite of so much self-seeking 
— ^and the peace in which men lived when they gave 
m.ore freely of their own. Hence a yearning after 
simplicity, and a longing to be detached from one's self 
which accompanies even the most enthusiastic enco- 
mium of progress. Hence, no doubt, many of the traits 
of individual courage which France has witnessed in 
the past few years. The French have welcomed with 
gratitude the opportunity which the danger of their 
country offered to them to know the rare taste of 
heroism while merely doing their duty. They feel that 



376 The Political Problems 

this great chance of breaking away from egotism may 
restore them to the simpUcity of less sophisticated 
times and rid them of the sensation of surfeit. 

All this is after all an a posteriori proof that political 
problems are ultimately reducible to moral problems, 
as in fact they become the moment they are presented 
in the concrete to each individual. Let there be in 
a nation the disposition to self-sacrifice which alone 
translates outward occurrences into the terms of ethics, 
and the fluctuations of its history will matter little: 
success will not weaken nor defeat depress it. 

But the difficulty is to keep up such a disposition 
after the excitement of a crisis has abated, and through 
long historical periods. It is here that the possibility of 
creating an atmosphere, a moral environment from 
which individuals cannot escape should be considered. 
Given such an atmosphere, even the weak become 
strengthened; without it, many naturally strong will 
waste their energies. But how can we produce this 
invigorating milieu in which even Socialist institutions, 
if they should ever be realized, would not be more 
dangerous for the temperament of mankind than the 
passage of Europe from feudalism was in the days of the 
Communist movement? Only one answer seems possi- 
ble; only one man will always and quite naturally raise 
all questions to the plane of morals, high above petty 
interest; this is not the philosopher, it is the believer, 
or at any rate the philosopher who knows where belief 
must begin. 

Nothing, except faith, will do for a whole existence, 
above all for the existence of a nation, what roused 
patriotism only does at intervals. The energy necessary 
for the building up of an Empire, nay, of such an 
apparently trivial affair as the building up of a family 



A Moral Solution 377 

of more than one child, will not be given to a whole 
nation without a religious support. It takes the sim- 
plicity, the trust, the almost imconscious habit of 
self-forgetfulness of the Christian to stay on the self- 
sacrificing level for any length of time. The everlast- 
ing study of Frenchmen, therefore, ought to be, in 
peace as well as in troubled times, the perfection of 
their race and faith as it appeared in such examples as 
Saint Louis or Jeanne d'Arc. With this admixture of 
patriotic pride and Christian humility, of true love and 
manly dignity, of childlike simplicity and common- 
sense as clear-sighted as shrewdness itself, history may 
be remodelled many times, civilization may evolve 
indefinitely, patriotism may assume numberless forms, 
but the individual will have no difficulty in reading his 
duty in historical circumstances. On the whole, politics 
will always be made subservient to morals, and morality 
is precarious without its eternal support; the lesson of 
this book is the recommendation of a plain and virHe 
Christianity. ~ 



PART IV 
CONCLUSION 



379 



CONCLUSION 

FRANCE AND THE WAR OF I914 

The general import of this volume is plain enough; 
France has been weakened by her disasters in 1870, but 
the losses she sustained at that time would have been 
made good easily, had it not been for the intellectual 
deterioration which a baneful philosophy and a lawless 
literature produced. The true weakening of France 
came from ideas obscuring her reason and enervating 
her moral powers. However, a country noted for 
lucidity and logic cannot be a prey to paradoxes for a 
longer period than that during which their brilliance 
or their daring aspect deceive as to their essential 
harmfulness. Let any circumstance reveal them in their 
true character, and in more or less time the fascination 
they create will be replaced by disgust. The circum- 
stance with men of the intellectual capacity of Taine 
and Renan, and hundreds of kindred intellects, was the 
war of 1870 and the Commune of 1871 ; it completely 
changed their outlook, and showed to them that in 
times like our own, during which the thought of the 
philosopher, tentative as the latter may think it, is apt 
to become the guiding rule of the millions, it is impera- 
tive for the thinker to watch carefully the effects of his 

381 



382 Conclusion 

speculation and be modest in its expression. This 
feeling, along with the development of doctrines less 
narrowly intellectual than those in favour during the 
greater part of the nineteenth century, has transformed 
the tone of French literature, and brought it back to a 
standpoint very similar to its traditional attitude. 

The masses were svue in due time to follow the lead 
thus given to them, but owing to the slow pace at which 
ideas travel through passive minds this might have 
taken long trains of years. The circumstance which 
awakened the national common-sense, as the Hterary 
man's responsibility had been roused beforehand, was 
the danger of France which appeared after the Tangier 
affair in 1905 and the Agadir incident in 191 1. From 
that moment the seeds of wisdom and energy, which 
had lain dormant while the multitudes believed in the 
millennium of universal peace and universal prosperity, 
developed with the rapidity of an unhampered natural 
growth, to the delight of patriots and the disappoint- 
ments of the enemies of France. It seemed as if, 
almost suddenly, the body of the French nation were 
recovering its long lost vigour in the bracing quality of a 
purer and clearer atmosphere. 

Yet, there was an obstacle in the way of this re- 
covery. While the country craved order, morality, 
and discipline as the conditions of self-preservation, a 
considerable section of its rulers — ^in fact the majority 
in the Senate and a strong minority in the Chamber — 
did their best to keep up the lawlessness and the general 
laxity, thanks to which they have been able during 
almost forty years to make the most of a constitution 
unworthy of the name for the promotion of their own 
selfish interests. 

History will not forget that in 19 13 the Radicals 



France and the War of 1914 383 

were against M. Poincare, whom popular feeling re- 
garded as the representative of patriotism against 
abdication to Germany, and that, in the spring of 19 14, 
on the eve of a war which many signs portended as 
imminent, they stood for a reduction of the military 
service from three to two years, a colossal crime unless 
it was a colossal folly. 

Against the obstacle arising from the presence of 
these men in office, there was the hope that the pressure 
of opinion would be sufficient to bring about, slowly or 
forcibly, through persuasion or through a coup d'etat, a 
modification of the constitutional laws limiting the 
powers of the Senate and Chamber, and giving sufficient 
elbow-room to Government to make its name something 
better than a mockery and its responsibility a reality 
rather than a word. 

The greatest portion of this volume has been written 
in view of this situation. Its tone, which some people 
will think alternately optimistic and the reverse, does 
not deserve, I will venture to say, such epithets. Optim- 
ism is built upon wishes rather than logic, and the 
hopefulness prevalent through this book is only an as- 
pect of gratification at tangible realities. The charge of 
pessimism is hardly better founded ; there is no pessim- 
ism in the certainty that a country destitute of a 
better guidance than that of an irresponsible assembly 
is, in spite of many favourable signs, in a dangerous 
condition. Yet, I must confess that the apparent 
success of the Radicals since the fall of M. Barthou 
and the consequent effacement of President Poincare 
were not likely to produce hopefulness, and that many 
a passage of this book was written in incertitude and 
anxiety. 

Now we have to find out for ourselves to what 



384 Conclusion 

extent the war of 1914 has justified or disproved the 
main views expounded in the foregoing pages. 

Never was there an easier task. Never was light 
more generously and evenly spread upon the great 
issues before which only in July, 19 14, we still stood in 
uncertainty. It must remain as the experience of all 
those who lived in France during the eventful days of 
the mobilization and the first weeks of the war that 
all that had seemed comphcated beforehand instanta- 
neously became simplified, and as all the elemental 
feelings of the human soul were finding expression, even 
on sophisticated lips, with the naturalness of the most 
ancient literatures, political questions suddenly became 
clear to the minds even of the peasant and the child. 

The real epilogue to this book was written in the 
facts themselves during the last days of July and the 
first days of August, 19 14. One week saw the acquittal 
of Madame Caillaux and the response to the mobiliza- 
tion order, and showed beyond a doubt that what is the 
main certainty running through these four hundred 
pages, viz., that if France was the victim of politicians 
her own heart was sound, cannot be shaken now. Four 
days after the sickening exhibition of sentimental de- 
cadence in certain Parisian spheres, and of the loss of 
honour among a certain section of the French magis- 
tracy, while the smell of decay was still in the air, the 
bells calhng the French nation to arms were heard in 
every town and village, and in one moment M. Caillaux 
and his party with its ambitions and corruptions van- 
ished from view as if they had never existed, and the 
country, which so far had been only a sort of abstraction 
perceived through literary phenomena or emotional 
manifestations, became one great body every motion 
of which was as perceptible as a familiar gesture. 



France and the War of 191 4 385 

And what were the characteristics of this true France 
rid at last of her political excrescences? Exactly those 
which hundreds of us had devotedly hoped would be 
revealed when the crisis came and the symptoms of 
which we had watched through years of patient atten- 
tion. The patriotism of the French was as pure as it 
had been during the Hundred Years' War or the great 
Revolutionary campaigns, and it was more universal. 
Every man did his duty and every woman encouraged 
him to do it with a simplicity which did not suppress 
joy but subdued enthusiasm; there was no hatred, if 
there was a degree of indignation, in its manifestations; 
the self -analysis inevitable with the French even when 
they are over-excited showed clearly that the war of 
1914 was not an occasion of revenge and redress, as it 
might have been, for the wrongs suffered in 1870, but 
exclusively the contest of civilization with overbearing 
barbarism; England was regarded in this struggle as 
the historical representative of justice and kindliness, 
and the declaration of the Czar announcing the 
resurrection of Poland, which a few months before 
would have had the appearance of a passage from 
an impossible epic, seemed a matter of course. The 
whole background of the war was intellectual and 
moral. 

With such an environment it was impossible that 
the courage of the soldiers and even of the non-com- 
batants should be much affected by the vicissitudes of 
the warfare. The present writer saw the French Army 
retreating from Belgium after the Battle of Charleroi, 
and he saw Paris on the eve of the probable siege in the 
last days of August; exhausted and battered as the 
soldiers were by four days' continuous fighting they 
were smiling and reassuring, and with the German 



386 Conclusion 

aeroplanes over them, the Parisians, women as well as 
men, showed extraordinary coolness. 

Another feature of those early weeks of the war was 
the evident satisfaction which the people took in feeling 
themselves for the first time, for many years, really 
governed. The Chamber and Senate had disappeared ; 
the Cabinet had become so intimately tmited with the 
military authorities that the War Office seemed to be 
the only seat of government; meanwhile the communi- 
cations of the Ministers as well as those of the Generals 
became so laconic that it required all the self-discipline 
latent in the national spirit to be satisfied with them, 
yet there was no sign of impatience, no expression of 
scepticism, and a questioning attitude on the part of 
M. Clemenceau was reproved as an attempt at dicta- 
torialness. 

So in these weeks during which all her vital qualities 
were one after the other tested, France proved that far 
from being in decadence, as superficial observers had 
imagined her, she was capable of self-possession resting 
on the clearest understanding of a situation, of endur- 
ing courage, of a slowly gathered capacity for discipline, 
in short, of all the manly virtues which, since her 
awakening from dreams and theories, have made her a 
nation again instead of the home of millions of indi- 
viduals, each one apparently engaged in the pursuit 
of his own ideal or pleasure. In this much, then, the 
war has demonstrated that the transformation de- 
scribed in this volume is a reality. 

The consequences in the near future are obvious. 
Even supposing that which at present seems unthink- 
able, that is to say, an ultimate success of Prussia re- 
sulting as in 1870 in a territorial diminution and a loss 
of political influence for France, the national spirit 



France and the War of 1914 387 

which I have described, helped by a strong government, 
would even under such unfavourable conditions make 
France a formidable danger for her enemies. In fact, 
the danger which Bismarck dreaded for years, and 
which he only ceased to fear when he saw the Constitu- 
tion of 1875 firmly established and productive of its 
worst effects, would become everlasting, and the com- 
bination of such a power with European opinion and 
the resolve of England and Russia would be sure in due 
time to restore to France the possessions she might have 
lost. 

If, as is more probable, the European equilibrium 
regain its stability, it appears impossible that France 
should make an unwise use of her renewed influence. 
There is no trace of imperialism or militarism in her 
attitude, her patriotism is free from all taint of over- 
weening pride, her wish for expansion is conditioned 
by that of her neighbours and will never become an 
overruling impulse; the days of Napoleon the First 
with his greed for conquest are as forgotten as those of 
Napoleon the Third with his taste for idle speculation. 

But whether immediate success or transient failure 
must be the conclusion of the gigantic struggle which 
France with her Allies entered in August, 1914, it 
remains all-important that the obstacle which through- 
out this volume has been pointed out as being in the 
way of her restoration — I mean the danger arising from 
a bad government or a bad constitution, should be per- 
manently removed. I have repeated several times in 
the third part of this volume that the sentimental or 
emotional impulse of a nation, however irresistible 
it may appear in its first effects, is essentially ephemeral. 
In spite of her transformation, if France shoiild happen 
to be led once more, after the peace is settled, by gov- 



388 Conclusion 

ernments intimately connected with a party looking 
for its success in disorder, lack of continuity, and ulti- 
mately such inferior tendencies as envy, greed, abhor- 
rence of effort and corresponding indulgence, what had 
been gained by years of slow reclamation would 
promptly be forfeited once more. Peace has always 
been a more difficult trial for the French than war, and 
Radicalism is a more dangerous enemy for their na- 
tional qualities than German militarism. 

So the real conclusion of this book must be that what 
France needs is not a conversion of her mind and soul 
which is at present an indisputable fact, but a trans- 
formation of her regulating system. This volume has 
been written for English readers with a desire under- 
lying every page that England may see clearly where 
are the true interests of France, because they are her 
own interests and after all the interests of mankind as 
well. Each nation must stand for an ideal for which it 
is particularly fitted. The ideal of England is to feel 
kindly and to govern justly; the ideal of France is to 
think rightly and to express her thoughts with the 
brilliance which seems her special gift. But this cannot 
be done, at any rate cannot be done with the spontane- 
ousness characteristic of happy periods, under political 
conditions making deception and intrigue a necessity. 
France cannot be representative of intellectual truth 
and of the order which invariably attends truth with a 
constitution amounting to anarchy. 

The hope and prayer of the present writer, therefore, 
is that England may see the necessity for France of 
stronger institutions. This is a favourable time indeed 
for a remodelling which even before the war seemed the 
only way open to the universal craving after stability. 
Wars have always been followed by efforts at improve- 



France and the War of 191 4 389 

ment which the light thrown upon every object by the 
presence of danger renders easy and even instinctive. 
All that is needed is that what we saw in the days im- 
mediately preceding the war, that is, a Parliament 
content with its r61e and a Government equal to its 
responsibilities, should become the rule and no longer 
be the rare exception. England is not expected to 
assume a part which her national temperament abhors 
and which nobody can imagine her assuming; there is 
no question of an impossible interference in the affairs 
of France ; but it is all-important that the sane opinions 
concerning the relations of the legislative and the 
executive powers now prevalent in the French Press 
should be known, examined, and appreciated in Eng- 
land. It is not amiss that the passionate attention with 
which Bismarck, towards 1875, followed the framing by 
the Assemblee Nationale of constitutional laws which 
he knew would work for him better than ten armies, 
should be the attitude of the friends of France at a 
time when the same laws appear at last in their true 
light and when the least effort may replace them by 
reasonable institutions. The interest in social improve- 
ments natural to every healthy mind is no interference, 
and it is often the condition of progress. 

I demand nothing more from the readers of this 
book. If our common wish be fulfilled, if with better 
institutions France be given the leaders she deserves, 
the beginning of the twentieth century will soon appear 
as one of the great turning-points in her history. With 
a distinct consciousness of the difference between real 
progress and mere dreams, between liberty and dema- 
gogism, the era opened a hundred and fifty years ago by 
the Encyclopaedists will be closed, and another opened. 
What this new era may be it is futile to predict, but 



390 Conclusion 

of one thing at least we can be certain, viz., that the 
propagandism natural to the French nation will be 
more active than ever, and that its expression, philo- 
sophic, political, or literary, will be immeasurably 
superior to what it has been since the end of the classical 
ages. 



INDEX 



About, 24, 32 

Academy, the French, 313, 333 

Acker, P., 321 

Adam, Madame, 66 

Adam, Paul, 315, 316 

Africa, 75, 79 

Agadir, 152 seq^., 204, passim 

Algeria, 48, 76 

Alsace-Lorraine, 45, 50, 70 seq., 

76, 79, 80, 83, 134 
d'Amade, General, 161, 352 
d'Annunzio, 236 
Amyot, 140 
Ancey, 226 
Andler, 135, 252 
Andre, General, 59, 128, 130, 132, 

155. 162 
Angellier, 308, 309 
Anti-Christianity, 21, 39 seq., 

64 seq., 90 seq., 185, 210 seq. 

— and education, 92 seq. 
Anti-Clericalism, 90 seq. See pp. 

30,91,96 

Antoine, 237 

Aquinas, Saint Thomas, 182 

Armee et Democratie, 132 

VArt pour I' art, 26 

Asia Minor, 126 

Association Law, the, iii, 119 

Assumptionists, iii, 112, 118 

Audoux, Marguerite, 315 

Augier, 103 

Aulard, 178, 181, 252, 274 

Austria, pasit and present diffi- 
culties of, 7, 8, 47 

— and Prussia, 23, 24, 44 
Aviation, 161, 259 



B 



Baden, 23 
Baltic, the, 146 



Balzac, 300, 310, 313, 322, 325 

Barbusse, 309 

Barres, Maurice, 74, 169, 182, 

190 seq., 204, 243, 245, 246, 274, 

285, 304, 306, 321, 322, 325, 

368 
Barthou, 168, 169, 204, 207, 208, 

217, 282, 343, 344, 346, 361, 383 
Bataille, 219, 229, 231 
Batiffol, Abbe, 285 
Baudelaire, 64 
Baumann, A., 321 
Bazalgette, 134 
Bazin, Ren6, 120, 285, 321 
Beaunier, Andre, 320 
Bebel, 136 
Belgium, 44, 84, 194, 355, 366, 

385 
Bellomayre, de, 294 
Benda, 320 
Benedictines, 112 
Benoist, Charles, 362 
Berenger, 202 
Bergson, Henri, 14, 249, 280, 325 

seq. 
Berkeley, 328, 329 
Berlin, 146 
Bernard, Tristan, 320 
Bernstein, 229, 231, 234, 254 
Bert, Paul, 91, 277 
Berteaux, 162 
Berthelot, 183, 202 
Bertrand, L., 315 
Beyrout, 122, 211 
Beyrout University, 282 
Biarritz, 23 
Binet-Valmer, 315 
Bismarck, 10, 23, 24, 49, 50, 54, 

55, 64, 70, 72, 73, 75, 85, 168, 

261, 387, 389 
Bjornson, 305 

Blanc, Louis, 20, 87, 194, 195 
Blondel, Dr. Raoul, 331 
Bocquet, 309 



391 



392 



Index 



Bodley, J. E. C: France, 104; 

Cardinal Manning and Other 

Essays, 260 
Bois, Jules, 309 
Bolingbroke, 263 
Bonald, de, 53, 176 
Bonnard, 309 
Bordeaux, 7 

Bordeaux, Henri, 285, 321 
Bornier, Gaston de, 235 
Bossuet, 280, 299, 300 
Bouh^lier, Saint Georges de, 311 
Boulanger, 72, 85, 352 
Boulenger, Marcel, 319 
Bourgeois, L^on, 96, 109, 144, 154 
Bourges, 313 
Bourget, Paul, 13, 17, 182, 187, 

226, 244, 246, 247, 250, 253, 

274, 282, 304, 305, 306, 321, 

322, 325 
Bourse du Travail, 216, 217, 357 
Boylesve, Rene, 320 
Boy Scouts, the, 264, 265 
Briand, 165, 168, 169, 204, 216, 

343, 346 
Brieux, 224-225, 228 
Brisson, 91 
Brittany, 263 
Broglie, Due de, 56, 170, 177, 181, 

536 
Bronte, Charlotte, 307 
Bronte, Emily, 17 
Brunetifere, 184, 186, 187, 275, 

280, 304 
Brunot, Ferdinand, 141 
Buddhism, 245, 246 
Budget, the, 61 
Bugeaud, 352 
Buisson, 164 
Buloz, 275 



Cabinet, the, 59 seq., 115 

Cssar, Julius, 153 

Caillard, 309 

Caillaux, 207, 344, 345, 357, 384 

Caillaux, Madame, 384 

Capus, 235, 274 

Carlyle, 272 

Carnot, Sadi, 59 

Catholicism, under the Second 
Empire, 12, 13, 30 seq., 288; 
and Humanitarianism, 19; un- 
der the Third Republic, 63 seq., 



90 seq., 108 seq., 118 seq., 255, 

273 seq., 288 seq.; and Theism, 
93 seq.; and Dreyfusism, 108 
seq. ; and Combism, 118 seq.; and 
Liberalism, 177 seq., 293; and 
the new France, 273 seq.; dis- 
appearance of hostility to, 273 
seq., 285 seq.; activities of the 
Church, 283 seq., 287 seq.; 293 
seq.; present status of the 
Church, 287 seq.; difficulties of, 
294 seq. ; prospects of, 296 

Cavallera, Abbe, 285 

Cavour, 9 

Celsus, 32 

Challemel-Lacour, 91 

ChMons, 39 

Chamber of Deputies, 55 seq., 70, 
86, 87, 88, 89, 115, 163 seq., 
213 seq., 346 seq.; Speaker of, 60; 
dangers from, 63 seq., 349 seq. 

Chambord, Comte de, 90 

Champagne, 263 

Charleroi, battle of, 385 

Charles V, 48 

Charles X, 19, 353 

Chateaubriand, A. de, 320 

Chateaubriand, Le Vte. F. R. de, 

19. 33. 175 
Chebli, Monsignor, 282 
Chesterfield, 299 
Chislehurst, 13 
Christian Brothers, the, 112 
Christianity, Renan and validity 

of, 17; and Humanitarianism, 

20, 64 

Clam, du Paty de, 342 
Claudel, 282, 285, 308, 310 
Clemenceau, 60, 91, 123, 144, 147, 

164, 167, 168, 181, 202, 207, 

216, 275, ,350, 352, 357, 386 
Clermont, Emile, 320 
Cochin, Denys, 96, 122 
Colbert, 37 
Colette, Mme., 315 
College de France, the, 34 
Colonial policy, 63, 75 seq., 100 
Combes. See Combism. 
Combism, 62, 81, 95, 96, 98, 105, 

106, 113 seq., 155, 277, 281, 

passim 
Commune, the, 50, 64, 177, 178, 

183, 347, 381 
Compifegne, 23, 268 
Comte, II, 32 



Index 



393 



Concordat, the, 98, 123 seq., 28? 

Condamin, Abbe, 285 

Condillac, 14 

Condorcet, 185 

Congo, 76, 171 

Conseil de revision, 87 

Constantinople, 122 

Council of State, 61 

Cour d'Appel, 87 

Courier, Paul-Louis, 32 

Courteline, 232 

Cousin, II, 14, 93, 94 

Craven, Mrs., 87 

Crimea, 10, 39 

Croiset, 333 

Curel, Frangois de, 237 seq., 242 



D 



Dante, 301, 308 

Danton, 181 

Darwin, 14 

Daudet, Leon, 189, 313 

Dauphin^, 263 

Decadents, the, 306 seq., 310, 317, 

319 
Delcass6, 59, 78, 80-81, 89, 124, 

136, 144 seq., 154, 163 
Deloncle, Frangois, 210 
Democracy, meaning of, 364 seq. 
Demolins, 139 
Denmark, 44, 46 
D6roulede, Paul, 74, 188, 252 
Descartes, 185, 327 
Descaves, 226, 313, 315 
Desjardins, Paul, 205, 246 
Dhorm^e, Abbe, 285 
Dickens, 15, 310, 320 
Diderot, 26, 140, 301 
Donnay, 103, 232 seq., 257 
Donnersmarck, Henckel von, 73 
Dostoievsky, 305, 315 
Doumergue, 167, 169, 205, 281, 

344 , . 

Dreyfus. See Dreyfusism 
Dreyfusism, 81, 95, 105 seq., 114 

seq., 127-129, 162, 183, 248, 

263, 323, passim 
Drumont, Edouard, 106, 107, 188, 

189, 245 
Duchesne, Monseigneur, 33 
Dumas, Alexandre, the Younger, 

222, 241, 305 
Dupanloup, Bishop, 177, 28a. 
Dupuy, 105, 108, 109 



E 



^^BRAY, A., 81 

5^cole Centrale, 139, 331 
Ecole Poly technique, 139, 196, 

331 
Elder, 315 
Eliot, George, 310 
Encyclopsedists, 11, 36, 41, 261, 

277, 389 
England, 84, 92, 97, 167, 206, 217, 

258, 365, 366; change in, i., 

former rival to France, 7; and 

Denmark, 44; and Prussia, 44; 

relations with Third Republic, 

82, 146, 385, 387 

— literature, 299, 300, 307 
Entente Cordiale, 168 
d'Esparbes, 316 

d'Estournelles de Constant, 154 
Ethics, indifference to significance 

of, 16-19, 186 
Ethics, connection with the 

Church, 96, 97, 98, 295, 377 
Evremond, 277 
Exhibition of 1867, 10 



Faguet, 60, 182, 183, 247 

Fallieres, 59, 166, 344 

Farrere, Claude, 316 

Fashoda, 80, 105 

Faure, FeHx, 58 

Favre, Jules, 83 

Fenelon, 269 

Ferry, 66, 75, 77, 91, 93, 94, 95. 

100, 277 
Fez, 154 

Finance, Ministry of, 60 
First Empire, 19, 157 
Flanders, 263 

Flaubert, 28, 29, 64, 302, 313 
Floquet, 85 
Fontenelle, 277 
Foreign Affairs, Ministry of, 59, 

60, 78, 81-83, 136 
Foreign Alliances, 78 seq. 
Fort, Paul, 308, 309 
Fouillee, 94 
France, Anatole, 32, 137, 173, 213, 

261,274,304,305,306, 318,319, 

321, 322, 325, 333 
France, La, qui Meiirt, 81 
France, present, i, 3, 8, 158 seq. 



394 



Index 



France — Continued 

298 seq., 334 seq., 373 seq., 381 
seq., in 1852, 7, 8; 1870, 21, 49- 
5i> I37i 381; demoralization of 
ideas, 11, 381, passim; depopu- 
lation of, 37, 76, 103, 218; 
Prussia, 1868, 43 seq.; constitu- 
tion, 52 seq., 82, 86, 100, 147, 
347 seq., 363 seq., 383; incoher- 
ence, 60; President, the, 54 seq., 
166, 345; commerce, 75,100,206; 
education, 84, 91 seq., 1 11, 129, 
135. 137 ^^i-i 249 seq.; education 
and the Classics, 230 seq.; news- 
papers, 170 seq., 202, 206, 275, 
310; European view of, 260 
seq.; national French character, 
262 seq., 298 seq., 306; influence 
of modern civilization on, 266 
seq.; foreign fashions, 267 seq.; 
need of strong man for future 
of, 348 seq.; need of stronger 
institutions, 388 5eg.; Coup d'etat, 
likelihood of, 356 seq.; the war of 
1914, 381 seq.; present temper of , 
384 seq. 

Frankfort Treaty, the, 50, 76, 79 

Frapie, 315 

Freemasons, 92 seq., 99, 113, 123, 
131, 277 

Freppel, Bishop, 85 

Fresnois, Andre du, 318 

Freycinet, de, 89, 105, 128 

Fromentin, 320 

Fustel de Coulanges, 193 



Gachons, J. des, 320 

Galileans, the, 124 

GaUieni, 128 

Gallifet, General de, 127, 128 

Gambetta, 55, 56, 64, 66, 69 seq., 

79, 83, 88, 90, 91, 126, 168, 210, 

251, 277 
Gamier, Ch. M., 315 
Gautier, Madame Judith, 313 
Gautier, Theophile, 26, 27 
Caulois, Le, 84 
Gay, Monseigneur, 284 
Geffroy, 313. 3i 5 
German professors, 157 
Germany, 97, 103, 104, 126, 136, 

145, 194, 217, 355, 365; present 

change in, i, 2; formerly an 



idea, 7, 8, 50; and Napoleon 
III, 10; defeats France, 1870, 

21, 50; civilization of, its appeal, 

22, 23, 40, 41, 80, 135, 212; sup- 
posed peacefulness of, 22, 23, 
24, 40, 46; deference to, 24, 
268; commercial expansion of, 
75. 350 1 relations with Third 
Republic, 79 seq., 136 seq., 146 
s^i-t 350; the present war, 385 
seq. 

Gide, A., 320 

Giraudoux, Jean, 320 

Gobineau, 253 

Goblet, Rene, 85 

Goethe, 308 

Gohier, Urbain, 276 

Goncourts, the, 15, 26, 27, 29, 302, 

305. 313. 314 
Gourmont, R6my de, 134 
Grandmaison, Abbe de, 285 
Grevy, 70, 88, 342, 349, 350 
Grey, Sir Edward, 264 
Guerin, Charles, 308, 309 
Guesde, 197 
Guillain, 331 
Guizot, 36 
Guyau, 14 
Gyp (Madame de Martel), 103, 

232, 257 



H 



Haeckel, 14, 275 

Halevy, Daniel, 36, 117 

Hamp, 315 

Hanotaux, 59, 78-81, 89, 100, 275 

Harduin, 276 

Haussmann, 10 

Hegel, 23 

Hennique, 313, 315 

Henry, Lieutenant-Colonel, 108, 

127 
Herder, 22 
Heredia, 26 
Hermant, Abel, 232 
H6rold, 134 
Herriot, 203 
Hervieu, 223, 224, 275 
Hirsch, 315 
Holland, 47 
Homer, 308 
Hugo, Victor, 19, 20, 21, 159, 300, 

303, 305. 307, 309-311. 317,322, 

324. 325, 354 



Index 



395 



Huguenots, the, 37 
Humanitarianism, 19 seq., 64 seq., 
207, 212 



I 



Ibsen, 222, 241, 305 

Idealism, 28; revival of, 187, 199, 
304 seq. 

Imperialists, 54, 90 

Income Tax, 61, 67 

Indo-China, 76 

Internationalists, 21, 135, 252; re- 
action against, 187 seq. 

Italy, 84, 97, 103, 126, 176, 350, 
365; change in, 2; former posi- 
tion, 8; and Napoleon III, 9, 
12, 39, 78; and the Third Re- 
public, 75, 104 



J 



Jaclard, 2,4 

Jacquier, Abb^, 285 

Jaloux, 320 

James, William, 256, 280 

Jammes, Francis, 282, 285, 308- 

310 
Jansenists, the, 198 
Japan, 77 
Jur^s, Jean, 88, 109, 113 seq., 123, 

127 seq., 136, 140, 144, 155, 159, 

161, 166, 169, 194, 195, 197, 203, 

208, 246, 249 
Jeanne d'Arc, 137, 193, 377; feast 

of, 282 
Jerusalem, 211 
Jesuits, 91, no. III, 112, 118, 

278, 282, 293 
Jews, the, 103, 106 seq., 188 seq. 
Joubert, 233 
Jouffroy, 12, 32 

K 

Kaiser, the, 145, 146, 153, 158 
Kant, 14, 328 
Keller, Colonel, 294 
Kiel, Canal, 79 
Kipling, 261 



Labiche, 36 
La Bruy^re, 269 



Lacordaire, Pfere, 177 

Lafon, 320 

La Fontaine, 134 

La Ferronnays, Mile., 87 

Lagrange, Abb6, 285 

Lajeunesse, Ernest, 246 

Lamartine, 19, 20, 87, 176, 307, 

309. 310 
Lamennais, 19, 20, 21 
Lamorici^rc, 352 
Lanessan, de, 347 
Langlois, 135 
Lanson, 141, 333 
Larbaud, 320 
Larroque, Patrice, 32 
Lasics, 128 
Latini, Brunetto, 137 
Lavedan, 103, 232 seq., 241, 243, 

257, 274 

Lavisse, 275 

Lebel, 85 

Leblond Brothers, the, 315 

Le Bon, Gustave, 256 

Lebreton, Abbe, 285 

Lechevallier, 331 

Leconte do Lisle, 25 

Lee, Vernon, 205 

Lefiivre, Andre, 132, 202, 346 

Legitimists, 54 

Lemattre, Jules, 139, 182, 183, 
184, 243, 247, 274, 305, 318 

Leraire, Abb^, 279 

Leo XIII, Pope, 91, 96, 100, 177, 
194, 245, 279, 294 

Lcn^ru, Mademoiselle, 236 

Lendtre, 181, 236 

Leroy-Beaulieu, 194 

Lesage, 316 

Leygues, 210 

Lhomond, 94 

Liberalism, 177 

Libermann, Pfere, 284 

Literature, under Second Empire, 
24 seq., 38; under the Third 
Republic, 103, 190 seq., 212 
seq., 220 seq.; present transfor- 
mation of, 298 seq.; foreign 
influences, 304 seq.; poetry, 
307 seq. 

Littr6, 14 

Loire, the, 69 

Lorin, 194 

Lorraine, 263 

Loti, 198, 253, 301, 306, 321, 322 

Loubet, 59, 113 



396 



Index 



Louis XII, 206 

Louis XIV, 7, 48, 133, 262, 288 

Louis XV, 170, 206, 268 

Louis XVI, 12 

Louis XVIII, 19, 353 

Louis Philippe, 12, 19, 36, 50, 

88, 206, 277, 288, 352 
Louys, Pierre, 319 
Lucretius, 32 
Luneville, 160 
Lyautey, General, 161, 352 
Lycees, the, 12, 30, 142 

M 

MacMahon, 55, 59, 70, 89, 90, 

163, 170 
Madagascar, 76 
Madame Bovary, 28 
Madelin, 181 
Maeterlinck, 222 
Maistre, Joseph de, 21, 43, 176 
Mallarm^, 307 
Marat, 181 
Marivaux, 233 
Marrast, Armand, 87 
Marryat, Captain, 223 
Marchand, ^2, 79, 352 
Mardrus, Lucie, 309 
Margueritte, Paul, 313, 315 
Massis, 255, 256 
Materialism, 14 seq.; reaction 

against, 186 seq. 
Maupassant, 233 
Mauriac, 309, 320 
Maurras, 53, 366-369 
Mediterranean, the, 48 
Meilhac, 36 

M^line, 100, 105, 109, 169, 343 
Merc^dfes, Sister, 292 
Mercier, 309 

Mcrcure de France, The, 134 
Merimee, 32 

Mesnil, Edmond du, 202, 347 
Messimy, 162 
Metz, 70, 146 
Mexico, 10, 39 
Michelet, Abbe, 285 
Michelet, Jules, 11, 19, 20, 21, 22, 

32, I37> 159. 213, 300, 324, 325, 

354 
Mill, John Stuart, 14 
Millerand, 59. 92, 109, 114, 130, 

162, 346 



Miomandre, 320 
Mirbeau, 226, 313, 315 
Modernism, 280, 292, 293 
Molifere, 267, 313, 316 
Moltke, von, 49, 72 
Monarchism, present growth of, 

352 seq., 366 seq. 
Monod, 135, 252 
Montaigne, 267 
Montalembert, Comte de, 177 
Montesquieu, 320 
Montfort, 316 
Morals, decadence of, 35-38, 52, 

loi, 218, 219 

— higher standard of, 217 seq., 
255. 373 seq. 

— • and the stage, 220 seq. 
Morocco, 76, 126, 145, 158, 161 

— Sultan of, 146 
Moselly, 315 
Mozart, 327 

Mun, Comte de, 84, 122, 194, 381 
Musset, 307-308, 309, 310 



N 



Nancy, 146 

Napoleon I, 7, 22, 48, 72, 93, 107, 
175, 288, 306, 352, 387 

Napoleon III, at Bordeaux, 7, 50; 
and Italy, 9, 10, 78; an ideahst, 
9, 37; and Prussia, 9, 10, 43 seq.; 
character of reign of, see Second 
Empire; religious attitude of, 
12, 13, 30, 31, 93; and commerce, 
36, 37, 38; his Court, 37; his 
army, 10, 39; misgivings of, 42 

Napoleon, Prince Jerome, 12 

Napoleon, Prince Victor, 359, 360 

National Assembly, 13, 53, 55, 56, 
62, 63, 65, 68, 70, 347 

Nationalism, 188 seq. 

Naturalism, 15, loi, 187, 199, 
300, 302-304, 305, 316, 323 

Nau, J. A., 315 

Navy, Ministry of, 60, 61, 77, 80, 
81 

Negrier, General de, 145 

Nesmy, 320 

Nietzsche, 306 

Nietzscheism, 246 

Nineteenth Cetitury, The; May, 
1907, 167 

Noailles, Comtesse de, 307-310 

Normandy, 263 



Index 



397 



o 

Olier, 284 

Orleanists, 54, 90 
Orleans, Duke of, 359-360 



Paiva, La, 73 

Pams, 342, 343, 357 

Panama Aflfair, the, 88, 165, 188, 

189 
Paris, 21, 23, 37, 49, III, 164, 260, 

263, 356, 385 
Paris Medical School, 14 
Parnassian School, the, 25, 26, 

308, 309 
Pascal, 299 
Pasteur, 328 
Pataud, 216 
Paul-Boncour, 203 
P^guy, 117, 246, 282 
Pelletan, Admiral, 132, 155 
Pelloutier, Fernand, 195, 215 
Pergaud, 315 
P^rigueux, 344 
Persigny, de, 24, 39 
Philip II, 48 
Philippe, Ch. M., 315 
Picard, H61fene, 309 
Picquart, General, 252 
Pius VI, 288 
Pius IX, 176, 177 
Pius X, 124, 177, 279, 289, 292, 

293 

Plato, 328 

Poincar^, Henri, 196 

Poincare, President, 54, 57, 89, 96, 

109, 166, 168, 169, 204, 207, 

214, 215, 341-348, 352, 357, 

360, 361, 383 
Poland, 385 
Porche, 309 
Port-Royal, 32 
Porto-Riche, de, 229-231 
Portugal, 47 
Posen, 44 
Pottecher, 309 
Prat, Abbe, 285 
Prevost, Marcel, 387 
Prevost-Paradol, La France Nou- 

velle, 15, 42-49, 75 
Prime Minister, 54, 58 seq., 165 
Protestantism, 23, 31, 96, 189 
Provence, 263 



Prudhomme, Sully, 308 

Prussia, former poverty of, 7; 
militarism, 22, 24, 157; and 
German unity, 44, 45, 50 

Psichari, Lieutenant Ernest, 254 

Psichari, J., 282, 321 

Puvis de Chavannes, 187 

Pyrenees, the, 48 



Q 



QuARR Abbey, 112 

Quarterly Review, The; Oct. 1911, 

73 
Quinet, 11, 19, 22, 32 



R 



Rabelais, 137 

Racine, 229, 230, 299, 307, 308 

Railways, nationalization of, 68 

Ranc, 91 

Rauh, Frederic, 135 

Realism, 28, 29, 186, 236, 313, 

316 
R^gnier, Henri de, 307, 309, 319 
Reid, 16 
Renan, 15, 17, 18, 19, 22, 31, 33, 

34, 40, 41, 56, 64, 65, 91, 114, 

133, 183, 185, 199, 246, 249, 

254, 261, 272, 274, 330, 368, 

381; Vie de Jesus, 33-35 
Renard, Jules, 134 
Rennes, iii, 127 
Republicanism, 20-22, 40, 52 seq., 

64, 71, 72, 83, 84, 96 
Revanche, the, 6qseq., 75, 104, 247, 

271 
Revolution, the, 11, 19, 157, 174, 

175, 176, 178; reaction against, 

175 seq. 
Revolutions of 1830 and 1848, 

the, 177 
Rhine, the, 44 
Ribot, 58, 207, 214 
Richepin, 275 
Rivoire, 309 
Robespierre, 181, 212 
Rolland, Romain, 213, 321-323 
RoUin, 140 
Romanticists, 19, 25, 300-302, 

303, 316 seq. 
Roon, von, 49 
Rosny Brothers, the, 313, 315, 

316 



398 



Index 



Rostand, 235 

Roupnel, 315 

Rousseau, 11, 41, 94, 179 seq., 
199, 269, 324 

Rouvier, 144, 145, 154, 164, 167, 
352 

Royalists, 19 

Royer-Collard, 16 

Russia, past remoteness, 7; posi- 
tion in 1870, 45; alliance with, 
1895, 79, 82, 100, 104, 387; 
change in, 99; literary influence 
of, 305, 306 



Saint-Auban, de, 220 

Saint-Front, Church of, 344 

Sainte-Beuve, 12, 25, 32 

St. Cyr, 252 

Salon, the, 36 

Saltet, Abbe, 285 

Sand, George, 19, 300, 305 

Sans-culottes, the, 87 

Sardou, 235 

Savignon, 315 

Scandinavia, 84, 355; literary 

influence of, 305, 306 
Scheurer-Kestner, 70 
Schleswig, 44 
Schnoebel(5, 85 
Science, 17, 25, 94, 97, loi, 126; 

present reaction against, 184 

seq., 305 
Second Empire, characteristics of, 

9, 10, II, 12, 13, 36-43, 268, 

277, 299, 387; sources of weak- 
ness, 48 
Seignobos, 135, 252 
Seine, the, 48 
Sembat, 208-213, 347r 363 
Senate, 57 seq. 
Separation Law, the, 125 seq., 

153, 210, 289, 292 
Shakespeare, 301, 307, 308 
Shelley, 299, 307 
Sisters of Charity, the, 112 
Steele, Le, 32 
Simon, Jules, 83, 93, 204 
Socialism, 19, 20, 21, 56, 109 seq., 

130, 216, 369; reaction against, 

193, 194, 248 
Sorbonne, 24, 134, 135, 140, 141, 

143 



Sorel, Georges, 22, 181, 196 seq., 

334 
Soudan, 76 
Spain, 126 

Spinoza, 14, 328, 329 
Spiritualism, 9<, 95 
Sports, popularity of, 258 seq. 
Spuller, 105 

Stael, Madame de, 22, 336 seq. 
Stage, the, 220 seq. 
Stendhal, 32, 253 
Strasbourg, 23, 69, 76 
Sulpitians, the, 112 
Syndicalism, 21, 155, 157, 164, 

195 seq., 215 seq., 248 
Syveton, 128 



Tagus, the, 47 

Taine, 14, 15, 16, 17, 22, 25, 32, 40, 
42, 56, 64, 65, 94, 114, 133, 178, 
180 seq., 199, 247, 249, 272, 287, 

294, 303, 329, 334. 381, 

Tangier, ipo5, 3,65, 145, 151, seq., 
passim 

Tarde, 255, 256 

Tennyson, 309 

Tharaud brothers, the, 319, 320 

Thiers, 13, 49, 53, 54, 55, 59, 89, 
178, 336, 347, 363 

Third Republic, influence of Sec- 
ond Empire, 13, 35, 41, 52, 
64; sources of deterioration of 
France under, 52 seq., 97, 180, 
262 seq.; before 18^5, 54-56; 
1876-1898, 56 seq.; pacificist 
character of, 6g seq., 82, 102, 129, 
154; 1898-1905, 105 seq.; and 
the army, 107 seq., 126 seq.; and 
the navy, 132; its patriot- 
ism, 133 seq., 252; the younger 
generation, 244 seq.; is it less 
French?, 260; after 1905, 151 
seq.; military spirit, 159, seq., 
352 seq.; sources of improve- 
ment, 157, 171, 172, 175, 187; 
patriotism widespread, 201 seq., 
385 seq.; wider outlook, 205, 
seq., 381 seq.; relations with 
Germany, 79 seq., 350; degrada- 
tion of politics, 83 seq., 98; de- 
basement of public spirit, 97 seq. 

Tinayre, Marcelle, 320 



Index 



399 



Tirard and Rouvier, 88 
Tixeront, Ahh6, 285 
Tocqueville, de, 53, 177 
Tolstoi, 255, 305, 310 
Tolstoism, 246 
Tonkin, 76 
Toul, 160 
Toulouse, III 
Touraine, 263 
Touzard, Abb6, 285 
Tubingen School, the, 23 
Tunis, 76, 171 
Turkey, 45, 99 

U 

United States of America, the, 
54. 57, 77, 9i> io3, 366 

V 

Vallery-Radot, 309, 320 
Variot, 321 

Vatican, the, 122 seq., 210 
Vaugeois, Henri, 189 
Vautel, 276 
V^drines, 161 
Venezelos, 264 
Verdun, 160 
Verhaeren, 308 
Verlaine, 306, 354 
Versailles, 41, 64, 76, 268 



Veuillot, Frangois, 220, 285 

Viele-Griffin, 308, 309 

Vigny, 307, 310 

Villon, 300, 308 

Vincent, Abbe, 285 

Viollis, 320 

Viviani, 205, 208 

Vogiie, Melchior de, 187, 304 

Voltaire, 32, 33, 91, 133, 137, 185, 

301, 317, 320, 324 
Voltairianism, 31 
Voisins, G. de, 320 

W 

Wagner, 23, 306 
Waldeck-Rousseau, 105, 109 seq., 

118 seq., 127 
Wallace, Sir Richard, 299 
Walpole, Horace, 268, 299 
War Office, 59, 60, 81, 128 
Washington, 43, 61 
Weiss, J. J., 140, 220 
Werth, 315 
Whitman, 256 
Wilson, 88, 349 
Wilson, President Woodrow, 361 



Zola, 15, 173, 187, 222, 302-303, 
313. 314, 316, 321, 322 



WHO IS 
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The Real 
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